chocolate sneakers

Website Design

2009-04-06T09:45:00.005+10:00

I know...it's not an illustration but it's a design I'm fairly happy and proud of it I actually wanted to post it in.

The brief was to "make it look less horrible" (imagine it with a French accent, the Sales Manager of the company is French)

So here it is: http://www.instinctsystems.com.au

New Card!

2009-03-25T21:22:00.003+11:00

Blanket Magazine

2008-06-16T22:33:00.001+10:00

My chocolate sneakers was placed in the current issue of Blanket Magazine.
Hurray! Makes me happy!

Melody

2008-06-15T20:55:00.000+10:00

Challenge!

2008-04-09T21:16:00.000+10:00

Go to http://artblanche.blogspot.com to see the first theme/challenge that got posted up.

Work Sketch 2

2008-03-29T11:19:00.000+11:00

Bored at my freelance job once again...so I finished the pencil tin...

Work Sketch

2008-03-27T23:50:00.000+11:00

While waiting for things to save and load...I sketched the pencil tin that was sitting on my desk at my current freelance job. Took prolly 30 minutes to do...I will eventually get quicker

The corner of doom in 30mins

2008-03-25T21:37:00.001+11:00

This is a 30min sketch of my corner of doom in my room. 30mins is like an achievement for me because I draw slow...because I have this absolute unwillingness to leave things rough and unfinished...

Oh yes, it's the corner of doom because well...I abandoned this desk in my room in favour of a new one and basically everything that I don't use goes there...resulting in this monstrosity..notice how spray glue is on that desk...and a massive amount of CDs from uni projects from the past 4 years...

Happy Easter

2008-03-24T00:29:00.001+11:00

one chubby bunny

2008-03-13T20:37:00.001+11:00

I drew him for a couple of card ideas that I've got.
He just needs a name....but right now I'll call him 'one chubby bunny'

Badminton Snail

2008-03-08T22:57:00.001+11:00

Did this for a family friend...he started up a club and he wanted a logo. The snail is their mascot because the club is aimed towards people who have never tried badminton before or are just starting out.

He really wanted a cutesy wutesy cartoon snail but I decided to at least have some cute factor but somewhat "cool"....as cool as a snail can get I guess. So here's the final product....must say didn't give a huge amount of consideration to the name because it just looked alright with the snail...it was more experimentation than having some awesome meaning and design behind it all. Always the way though isn't it? Hehehe...

The other Cafe Sketch

2008-03-07T18:08:00.000+11:00

Cafe Sketches

2008-03-07T11:19:00.001+11:00

A couple of sketches from last night while we were sitting in the cafe. There's another one but I haven't finished it so I'll put it up when I'm done with it.
The thing on the right was the links of my watch, I quickly got tired of drawing it because of the table moving constantly and the light changing quite a bit while we were sitting there...

The dining setting on the left was super quick sketching cause the cups and bottles on the table were quickly cleared off. I added in the jacket later as the next couple of patrons sat down and he set his jacket on that chair.

Whenever I look at my pencil sketches I tend to dislike them, probably because I don't see them as a well refined piece....but these sketches I actually quite like because it's still got that rough sketchy quality but there's a little bit of refinement in it. I also never like the clean white of the page...when I know it's off white and there's a smudge here and there from my hand....it makes me like my sketches more....gives it a bit more grit to it I guess.

Card Designs

2008-03-05T22:31:00.002+11:00

Most of you will know that I've been working at a Christmas card place.
It's only been these past couple of months that I've actually had the chance to design some cards for them and get them printed and so forth. I had a lot of fun doing these illustrations or designs because...I didn't like about 80% of the cards that they had and I had been wanting to create different card designs for them for ages so I was superbly content with just sitting in front of my laptop and my tablet...just colouring away.
So I figured I should show you a few cards that I've been doing.

Got told by my boss that I had to take a nice picture of someone's house filled with Christmas lights because they wanted a card targeted towards real estate businesses. They make a lot of money from them at christmas time so it made sense. I thought it was kinda tacky to just take a picture so this was my take on it. It took awhile for them to warm to this idea because it was so different to their normal range of cards, but now it's one of their favourites.

One of my workmates found an image of all the reindeers together in cartoon form and thought that it was extremely cute. They told me to like add bodies to their heads to make it look cute and different to the image, but I ended up just playing with the edge of the card. Reindeers are cute and fun to draw.

Aussie Christmas was the main idea for this one. So I looked at a lot of reference images of beach huts and drew the beach huts in victoria and made them all christmas colours and patterns. There's a hut for Santa, Mrs Claus and an Elf. This one is officially called 'Santa's Beach Hideaway'.

Again Aussie Christmas was the theme but they wanted something a bit more Aussie. So flip flops was the answer. I think the thing that took ages was the text on the straps because it was hard to make it stand out amongst the yellow. I ended up spending more time on the text than on every other part of the actual drawing. I ended up using the noise filter for the sand even though it's "amateur" but I don't particularly care. It looks like sand so it's fine.

Birthday one...I had free reign with this one, could do anything that I wanted. I just basically got a lot of typical birthday motifs, a lot of vibrant colours and presto! a birthday card.

Doing this made me realise that I really like drawing illustrations for cards. I'm currently working on a design that will hopefully be good enough for like big card companies like hallmark and john sands...I'm going to try my luck.

Chocolate Sneakers

2008-03-04T23:24:00.000+11:00

I figured the first thing I should draw for this blog was the title...
Jen helped me with the name...the two things that I like the most combined together as one.
I spent a lot of time on it because I don't tend to do sketches and just leave them...and i'm really bad a freely sketching and drawing too...I tend to need reference quite frequently and i don't get in the mood if I do it that way. I guess it's just the way I function.
So this is usually the first sketch...it's quite detailed...
I based it off my favourite pair of converse shoes and the decided to put in the bits of chocolate...where it's meant to go etc etc

Then this is where everything kinda comes together...I coloured this in photoshop...my friends are the brush tool, opacity, layers, blur and smudge.
And here's the final product.
I haven't drawn like this in awhile...so it was a lot of fun to do...