DEM BONES, DEM BONES.

This is Interesting

The Italians do lots of things well; coffee, fine leather-goods, underground crypts decorated exclusively with human bones.

A few years ago on my first trip to Rome I was introduced to memento mori in a pretty extreme way. I visited The Capuchin Crypt  decorated with over 300 deconstructed Capuchin skeletons stacked upon each other.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

I also encountered artistic antiquity and saw the motifs of skulls in still life, particularly in depictions of St Jerome who is depicted holding a skull.

st-jerome

Ah, Saint Jerome, always with a skull on his desk and three week old Chinese food in his fridge. His apartment looks like my old university house that I moved in to and never paid rent for.

Memento Mori is Latin for “remember (that you have) to die” and is a reminder of your own mortality and not to dwell on “things” because the “things” in heaven are way sweeter than the ones on earth bro, and you can keep those for, like, ever… So long as you go to heaven that is. So if you obtained your memento mori by ripping it from your friend’s living face as a nice desk paperweight you aren’t going to heaven… you’re probably going to that other place. NOT HELL, THE OTHER PLACE… you know the pit of despair, full of desperate people showing their worst sides… The domino’s pizza complaint line.

Speaking of people showing their worst sides, I just returned from a trip to Vegas. While I was there I went to the Bodies exhibit where unique preservation techniques have preserved actual humans that have been separated into all the different bodily systems. It brought me back to the bone crypt in Rome and reminded me of my own mortality and that I still wanted a memento mori of my own in my studio – much like Saint Jerome. Well they had some in the gift shop. Not real ones but medical grade replicas used for educational purposes. I brought it home and it now sits by my computer to remind me of my mortality and to remind me that skulls look super cool.

Her name is Dana

Her name is Dana

What I am now interested in is what customs thought when they saw the X-ray of my luggage and saw what would have looked like a human head in there and went right along and let me back into the country.

?

MOVING PICTURES

Uncategorized

In 2013-14 I got to see my drawings come to life as I provided some illustration work for a few videos. It’s great to collaborate with film-makes who can bring these characters to life with simple movements.

The first was featured at the end of a number of XXXX Gold online videos that were set on XXXX Island. You could skip to the end to see my illustrations or you could watch it straight through and learn to fish with live bait… but don’t blame me when the zombie apocalypse hits and you need to go fishing because all the twinkies have run out and you had a perfectly good opportunity to learn some valuable fishing skills.

XXXX GOLD

I also provided some cute illustrations to liven up a video on keeping shareholders happy. It was an excellent gig and my drawings are peppered throughout the video.

Enjoy.

ED’S ELF

Design

I’ve designed the company Christmas card the last three years and last year we gave away kites as well as a donation to Redkite – a charity that looks out for young Australians suffering from cancer.

Designing a card that matched the gift was a really fun exercise and I enjoyed working with this illustrative flat design.

card

Last year also marked the 20th anniversary of the company. I was tasked with designing a postcard that got inserted and distributed in Research News magazine. I illustrated the trends of 1994 and 2014 and again kept the design within our company palette.

2014 bday crd frt

2014 bday crd bck

Desk

Design, Painting, This is Interesting

In the past year I have moved to more towards digital design and further away from painting for no other reason than more design opportunities presenting themselves and the more I designed bits and bobs on my computer the more work cropped up. In doing so my studio has also changed to accommodate more for sketching and designing. This is what it looks like today:

my new desk

… and this is what it looked like 1 year ago:

Image

Image

The workspace of a creative person evolves to serve three purposes: to be a functional workspace, to spark inspiration and to be a comfortable space to work (however not comfortable in the same way a living room is comfortable – these two spaces need to be separated somehow).

It’s great to have everything you need at your fingertips without it crowding your desk/studio. An amazing example of this is Casey Neistat’s studio:

I’m not so keen on the gun and weaponry which are “Kinda funny” to use in case the “pizza guy gets belligerent… you have it at the ready”. How much/often are you pissing off pizza guys Casey!?

I found this video through a blog post by artist Suffoca, who also has recently posted a few nice shots of his studio.

If you really enjoy looking at peoples studios from the safety of your own home check out Desk  which also comes as an app and makes for good viewing on the iPad.

Image

BEHIND YOU!

Design, Painting

Recently I have been working on a project that involves a lot of detailed background illustration. In looking for inspiration I’ve ended up in a Google spiral of animation background artwork. From the very detailed and soft glowing designs of old-school Disney animation to the jagged screaming simple lines of Chuck Jones’ Looney Tunes cartoons sometimes we are so distracted by the action of the character we forget to look at what’s going on in the background. Rob Richards’ does some excellent work restoring old animation backgrounds on his blog and is worth a look at as the website is quite extensive. Here are a few from the blog…

… and here is an amazing old video introduced by Walt Disney explaining the technology used for Bambi to create depth in the background using an elaborate system of moving panes. The level of invention used in these early animated movies was astounding.

 

Justice Lease

Design

It’s three weeks ’til the new Superman movie comes out and I am pretty excited. I’m going to the premier in my best suit and then under that suit I will wear my Clark Kent suit and under that suit I will wear my superman pajamas suit, I may never take off the first two suits at the cinema but I’ll know that underneath it all I’m a Superman… a sweaty, suffocating Superman who will order a large Coke at the candy bar and will freak out in the bathroom when I undo 2 flies and have to wrangle the underpants I’m wearing over the superman suit.

In anticipation for the new film and because it’s fun to make movies, some friends of mine have started a web-series called Justice Lease. I contributed four illustrations for the intro which look really slick incorporated into the final product.

aquaman sketches Batmoon hulk sketch SUPERMAN final

The series is about superheroes living together. The house is perhaps too small to contain all of their egos and alter egos.

I have an alter-ego called Chad Bunnings. He understands what all the posts are for in all of the sports, he can open the front boot of a car and tell you the machine part that’s not working, he even has names for his fists: Punchy and Phillip.

You can see Episode one of Justice lease here:


If you liked this episode and want to see more, you can help pay for camera rental and sandwiches for the gaffer by adding to the Justice Lease pozible here

For Being a Knife Guy

This is Interesting

photo(32)

I came home form my holiday away to find this package waiting for me. As I raised over $1000 for Movember I received this delightful certificate and very handy pocket knife that comes with a comb and scissors in case I need to do any beard maintenance on the go. You too could become a Platinum Member of Movember if you join me in the good fight this November and help Sydney look like the 1970s again.

The month is Mover

Painting, This is Interesting

The month of Movember is over.

That’s it for my upper lip. My mo has to go. It’s the end of the line for this hairy line. The eyebrows of the mouth have to head South. The stash has to dash. There’s mo more Movember so mo mo Movember mo.

It’s been a long hairy month to which I have dedicated my time painting mustache artworks. Here is a quick look at how successful this was…

MOVEMBER COLLECTION SOLD

Through selling paintings alone I have raised $1, 200 but all up I raised $1, 655 and I think if you raise this much money for Movember you also never get testicular cancer and never get depressed. It’s True! I just spent two hours watching Requiem For A Dream while slamming my gonads in a microwave door.

The ‘For The Love Of Mo’ web series I took part in has also come to an end and in a suprise twist I overtake the other two Movember bro’s in the last minute when I almost triple my fundraising in one mad dash for December 1st.

Thank you for your donations: Charissa, Jude, Sarah, Miles, Dom, Skye, Laura, Ange, Fuzzy, Colin, Kelly, Milly, Jess, Jacqui, Master Quinn, Vaughanie, Pat, Eddie, Louis, Hamo and especially Sam

A huge thank you to Tim and Kim for putting together the For The Love of Mo web series. You guys made my Movember something special.

A BIG thank you to my girlfiend for supporting me through the first week of mustache cultivation where I looked like I could steal pringles from a 7-11 at any moment.

It’s also my Birthday today and my 50th blog post so howaboutthat!

Mo and Tell

Painting, This is Interesting

Movember is almost over. These days it’s starting to look more like I have a mustache and less like I was really thirsty and drank Ovaltine like it was going out of fashion. I have such a real mustache I could pass as one of the music students at high school who could get away with a wispy mustache because they were fragile and cool and somehow untouchable by the year-master who would bust anyone else for growing the most pathetic sprouts of a beard that made us feel so much like Indiana Jones on expedition and less like the greasy sack of bones frying burgers at a cafe for fourteen dollars an hour.

The picture above is of all the paintings I’ve made for Movember. All artworks sold, 50% of the sale is a donation to Movember. If you want to buy one contact me. Otherwise you can make a straight donation at my Movember page.

I’ve enjoyed this month very much and have great respect for Tim Anastasi and Kim Low for putting together a very slick web series that I was lucky to be a part of. You can watch the full series here.

EPISODE 1

EPISODE 2

EPISODE 3

EPISODE 4

EPISODE 5