FACEPOCALYPSE

Last Saturday was the 3rd sketch meetup for our Perth sketch group. I would encourage any artist to come down and draw with us. It’s an awesome incentive to draw with other artists and a good chance to trade tips.

I’ve always been terrible at giving faces ‘character’, and while I don’t want to go as far as Jeff‘s caricatures, it’s nice to see how he tackles them and get some protips.

I haven’t taken these very far from realism (and a few are totally representational), but I think I’m improving with faces. It’s also helped me to think about the underlying structure (map it on a skull shape), as you would when learning anatomy.

Learning the base form allows you to exaggerate it in ways that aren’t absurd.

This week’s sketch meetup event is here. Greens @ 2:30-5pm on Saturday. Possibly my last meet before ducking off.

Jack mentioned my Florence Welch portrait reminded him of the infamous All Your Base image, so I thought I’d do a tribute sketch. For great justice.

In other news, I got back from Melbourne on Monday. Read the rest of this entry →

I whipped up a design for one of those 1.8m tall, standing point-of-sale banners for the crew over at Future Perth, a fairly youthful organisation focussed on improving Perth. The design’s not very exciting but it’s functional, and will just be one element at their booth/stall. The original request was for a black banner, which set off alarm bells. Anyone that’s worked with me will attest to the fact that I generally avoid black. It’s overstated, high-impact and dominant… and Facepocalypse is all over that action!! But blue is much more appropriate for a committee that needs to look professional and approachable.

A lot more thought goes into design than may be expected from a glance. Read the rest of this entry →

Some weeks back on July 25th the Condor Towers carpark was opened for one evening to showcase the result of 100+ artists (mostly street artists) painting its walls and pillars.

It was really refreshing to see the mass turnout for its public viewing night, with a lot of trendy people weaving through the carpark’s interior. It’s nice to see projects like that are becoming a within the Perth art scene.

If you missed it on the evening, Jerrem’s posted some footage here. As well as linked to some pics on flickr. Also, I make a brief appearance in the video @ 2:20, so keep an eye out!

With our upcoming exhibition, Nick and I have been perusing Perth printing services.

I had my heart set on stretched+framed canvas printing and chased quotes accordingly. We were advised by fine arts printing services that the quality difference between your generic Big Ws and Officeworks canvas printing and that of a dedicated specialty printer is huge. Ofcourse, that’s part of their sales pitch, but having dealt with a range of printers for graphic design work I can believe it. You get what you pay for.

I figure I’ve spent all this time creating artwork for the exhibition and it could easily sabotaged by the choice of printer. Read the rest of this entry →