Wellington!

I've just come back from a wee trip to Wellington where I was lucky enough to stay on the top floor of a hotel (living the high life, literally! (groan)). Here's some sketches of the view. The one of the staircase was an amazing 17 story high stairwell which was perched on top of a 8 or 9 story building. Every so often some office worked would walk up or down a few flights, it was very thrilling.

Also I took some prints with me and now my prints, postcards and bookplates stocked in Eyeball Kicks gallery on Cuba Street. 

Inklings

I've been really enjoying working with indian ink recently. These two sketches are on this fairly cheap and nasty card card which I got a bulk deal of. Turns out its actually quite nice stuff for doing ink drawings on, so long as you don't use too much water on it.

An old sketch

Found this today when I was tidying up, nice little sketch of Millicent Crow from our on-again off-again drawing group.

Chromachameleon

Chromacon is THIS SUNDAY, all day from 9am to 5pm. I'll be there with postcards, bookplates, tote bags, prints and lots of stuff to look at. There's loads of great illustrators exhibiting and there is going to be demos and whatnots. Here is how to find me, conveniently next to some lifts for an easy escape.

Rattle and Rolex

Annuli on legless squamata #1: The Rolex and Rattlesnake.

Diverse City Issue #1

Here's the final cover design for the Diverse City publication. In the end I had to move the illustration over so the text had some clear space to sit on. Other than the tree no longer sitting on the spine I think it works pretty well.
You can pre-order a copy from Changing Minds over here. The first issue comes out in June and has an interview with yours truly!

incidental paintings

These are the by product of my recent paintings.  I like the mix of colours and mark making.

Postcards!

I'm slowly getting prints and other bits n pieces together for Chromacon, here are the postcards I ordered, just arrived today. Although the photo of the back is a little obscured by the flash, but if you look closely you'll see that I put a website address at the bottom, exciting stuff! Although it's not ready yet so don't go there yet.

Going potty

In the British sense, not the American one. You may recognise these plants from my Wooly Bully paintings, I'm resurrecting them, you see I really want to get some fabric printed, maybe with this design and the other one, the potted plants, pears and pineapples print I did a couple of months back. Just searching round for places to get them printed.

www

Seed Gallery invited me to be part of their upcoming Alphabet exhibition. To match the W I decided to base the work on the word 'wanderer' and then lo and behold it turned out all wild west-ish, albeit a funny alien wild west.
There are 26 artists in the show and Seed is producing a pack of alphabet cards from the show and the original works will be for sale too. The exhibition opens on the 25th of June, more about it here.

Cabin in the woods...

This painting is for my submission to the Chromacon art book, inspired by Swedish Falu cottages. I'm really pleased with curtains and the colour palette. Might get some prints of it made to sell at Chromacon, less than 2 weeks to go! Also if you want a copy of the art book or just to support the festival you can do so here.

Sketchbook page

Back on the pineapple-gators

4 seasons in 40 something days

Spring

 Summer

Autumn

Winter

These are the final four illustrations for the project I've been working on. I'm not sure whether I'm allowed to show off the final designs with fonts and all yet so I'll keep em under my hat. 

I've just noticed I have a tendency to put headless ladies at the top and legless men at the bottom, hmmm.

Busy little bouquet

Just an evening sketch, still using up my extra gouache from my Diverse City paintings. Fun to do something a little more folky.

Moist

Well the drought has broken and now all manner of mysterious mushrooms have been popping up, the weirdest was a sprinkling of small pale shrooms the size of lawn daisies which were all through the garden but then had disappeared an hour or two later.
This painting is a couple of months old but I thought it appropriate to post considering that there is currently grass poking through our deck and the aforementioned mystery mushrooms.

Quiet time

I'm trawling over new and old images of mine to make into prints for Chromacon. This new one is a reworking of this sketch from last year. Not sure yet whether to do it as a postcard or print....

Any suggestions of my old works to turn into postcards or prints would be greatly appreciated! 

Morning sketch

Today's lil sketch was a self portrait, done while listening to mine and Nigel's radio show(!). New heights of narcissism?
Done from my head and not from my reflection. Got my glasses all wrong cos I had to take them off to look at them then wasn't wearing them when I painted them on. Now that it's getting colder I will have a permanent red nose and warm ugly sweater until at least October

Dailies

My Zombie Resume is still going strong, it's in this awesome comics anthology. Looking forward to seeing it on lovely newsprint! The Auckland launch is at The Audio Foundation on the 20th of April with a bunch of bands, starts at 6.30. More info here

Good morning

I'm trying to loosen up my work, this lil' morning sketch was laid down in paint first (no preliminary pencil sketching, eeek!), with no idea of what it was going to be before I started. The colours are left overs from some recent paintings.

Gratuitous cat sketch