Sketches of people

Here are some sketches I've been doing over the last couple of months. Just casually, for fun.

Painting Patricia: process shots

A freshly stretched and primed canvas.

Underpainting with a colour complimentary to her skin tones, using sketches from our first sitting and some photographs I took.

I wanted to have a warm red glow under the white background with potentially some shadows.

Using acrylics and binder medium to spread the paint thinner while keeping a slight glossiness. Normally I paint with oils so this was a fun experiment. I used both palette knives and brushes.

This was after our second sitting, where Patricia sat in my lounge room and smiled for over an hour. After painting her head and neck/shoulders while she was with me I then finished the rest of the painting using photos I'd taken as reference material.

...And done!

'Same' - a children's book

By Katrina Roe and... myself! Published by Wombat Books.

This is the third children's book I've illustrated, and it's now on the market! A box of them arrived last week on my front doorstep - how very exciting!!

'Same' is a book about difference, acceptance and finding common ground. It's based on a true story.

I had so much fun with this book - and got to use not only coloured pencils and water colours but even some crayons! It's pretty wild...

We're planning to have a couple of launches for 'Same' in August, but if you're wondering how to lay hands on a copy, the book can be bought direct from the publisher's website.

2015 Archibald entry

I love painting people! And Patricia Weerakoon is no exception. In fact, we had a lot of fun together as I prepared my portrait of her for this year's Archibald. We had a couple of sittings and it was lovely to get to know her better over this time. In the second sitting she managed to hold a smile (on and off) for over an hour and a half while I painted her! ...no wonder her grin is so bright in the picture.

Here's the finished painting I submitted last Friday:

Art classes

Over the past couple of terms I've had a lot of fun progressively teaching more and more art classes for kids! Some have involved cartooning and comics-making, others pastels and going through art movements, and one was even a workshop on making concertina books and zines!

Anyway, here are a couple of photos from the pastel classes...

Illustrative by-products

I went away to India for six weeks over the Summer (Jan/Feb). It was amazing, and dry and dusty with lots of people. It was also a nice break from my normal responsibilities, and I did some drawings... for fun (what a novel idea)!

These two sketches are of a setting my brother was creating for a DnD campaign. I wanted to add the idea of floating islands of junk orbiting the under part of a city built on a bridge. So I got drawing...

Before I left for India at the end of December, and during the first three weeks after I came back, I was also working hard to finish my third children's book - "Same" by Katrina Roe and soon to be published by Wombat Books. This is due to come out in July of this year (2015). Below are some sketches/colour testing in prep for that book as well as some other illustrative by-products from other work. 

And the Sydny Comics Guild is having another anthology this year! Yay! I'm planning my own short 8-page comic to be part of it and am very keen. I have plans to turn it into a cute concertina book. Some character designs: