More Spirit Guide Advice

Based on a comment by the surehanded and genuinely Irish Donnachada I am going to continue this thread of spirit guides offering straight forward advice.

Tree in the wind...

Grrrrrr

This is a brief pictographic representation of the relationship between production and sales.
I am quite sure you can all transpose the same roles into your own specific places of work.

The Remarkable Francesco Francavilla

Firstly - this is not a picture by Francesco, but it is inspired by his character "Black Coat".
At the moment I do not have a link to any of his work (although you can find plenty of it over at drawingboard.org, but you have to be logged in to see it).
I think it would be nice to let everyone know firstly, what a terrific artist he is, and secondly, what a delightful fellow he is too.
Always ready with a kindly comment and useful advice for anyone.
I've emailed him in the hope that he can provide me with a link to his work so hopefully I can pop a link up later today.

Filthy Vermin

Confuzzed

I had a wonderful moment with old friends and mentors while I was away.
At the end of the evening over cups of tea I mentioned that I was seriously considering moving back to Melbourne.
I was expecting some encouragement, but in fact got "Why? Oh you've done the Melbourne thing. Don't move back here. Go overseas and work there".
This was not really what I wanted to hear, and I am now more confused than ever.

Home from the Big Island again...

Hey ho bloggers.
Here are a few final snaps from my latest venture back home.
Below is a picture from a very jolly party I attended.
Steve Pascoe is my old illustration lecturer and his wife turned 50 and as many of us had remained in close contact with him we were all invited.
It was lovely.
I discovered after 13 years of knowing him, he plays guitar and accordian beautifully.
People got up and did a piece for his wife, a song, a chunk of opera, his kids did a violin piece each.
It was lovely.
The fellow highlighted in the picture directly below is well known Australian animator Dennis Tupicof.
A very nice fellow who is also extremely tall (he's at least 7 feet tall).
Steve tells a story about when they were in uni together, a fly wandered onto the set of one of Dennis' stop motion shoots and ruined the shot.
In frustration Dennis punched a hole in the ceiling.


Bye bye Melbourne again.
It had been a lovely weekend and the weather because unpleasant just in time for me to get on the ferry.
Fortunately I was not unwell.
I drank 2 beers and had 2 sleeping tablets and snored my way across Bass Straight.
I was still tired when I got off the ferry and had to pull over for a snooze on the side of the road as I feel asleep twice at the wheel (only for a second each mind you but it was still a scare).


Here are a couple of signs I found on deck on the ferry.
If anyone has any explanation as to what the fuck they mean I'd be delighted to hear.
Electric life rings provided?
Does it suggest some kind of artificial intelligence? That perhaps this life ring can think for itself?


What the hell is this??? Apart from being a crappy design for something inexplicable.


Also, a fellow called Rex Ellison left a message for me on one of my posts but I can't for the life of me find where it is so I can respond to it.
Rex - if you're reading this contact me again!

Until Monday...

Righto.
I'll be getting on the ferry again in a few hours.
I had a huge night on the piss at a friends 50th.
Here are two pictures from the day before the party.

Me and my very lovely friend Llael.
As per last time, I'm posting this because it's always nice to be seen with beautiful women.
Plus she also helps provide aethestic balance against my head, which resembles a sack of flour.
Also - go take a look at her oil paintings because they're terrific.

I include this picture solely for the benefit of my very special friend Beth S, who apart from having an entertaining blog (mostly about drinking too much and falling on her arse), is also witty, intelligent and very gorgeous indeed.
Beth noted not that long ago that I'm always taking pictures of nice places with no-one in them.
This is a bar outside one of my favorite Melbourne Cinemas, The Kino.
There's an accidental illusion here.
It kind of looks like there's a reflective pool but it's just the tabletop.
My beer cost $7 which I was not very happy about, considering it's imported through Boags Brewery which is about 5 minutes down the road from my house in Tasmania.

15 Men on a Dead Mans Chest

From Tasmania to mainland Australia it's a breezy 40 odd minutes in a plane.
To take the ferry is 9 hours.
Why would one ever take the ferry you may ask?
Well - it means you can take the car, and it means you can spend 5 of those hours drinking (4 to sober up so you can drive off the ferry safely).
I took the ferry last night.
Here is is.
There are 3 of them - SPOT 1,2 & 3.
Spirit Of Tasmania what that stands for.

The terminal is about an hour from my home, in a dump of a town called Devonport.
I visit Devonport only for work, and they also have a better cinema than Launceston.
This part of Devonport looks like the New Jersey shoreline and the rest isn't much better.

Behold this spot.

Now I guess some of you European types may well be accustomed to taking boat rides of this kind.

What with our nation being mostly uninhabitable desert, there's not much in the way of ferrying going on.

This is the first one I've ever had and it was quite exciting.

Important employees looking busy.

No - it's not a cinema! It's where I tried to sleep unsuccessfully for 9 hours.
I did discover that against all expectations I didn't get sea sick.

Victorian coastline about 5 in the morning.

And my home city of Melbourne from sea.
I spent the day at the cinema.
Brothers Grimm, directed by my favorite film maker provided as much dissapointment as I was expecting.
Corpse Bride was terrific - I know a few of the bloggers I visit regularly contributed to the film so here's a big "hey ho, good work and all" to all of those very fine folks.

Off and Away again

This is a picture for Oscar - (see his comments under the dumb fish gag).
I'll be heading home to Melbourne for a few days.
Birthday to go to, movies to see (Corpse Bride and Brothers Grimm), women to shag (Winona Ryder and Uma Thurman).
Have fun everyone.
I'll check your work from home and I'll update with pictures from my home!

Stupid Joke

And to balance all this gloomy Batman stuff, here's a very dumb joke.

Pen and paper

I mentioned yesterday I was going to tackle some real pen and in versions of these things.
This is my first test.
It's small - half an A4.
You can't see the texture I created that well, but I'll work on that for the bigger ones.
Shapes aren't quite right, but on the whole I got what I was after.

More of this Batman palarva

Well all this Batman stuff continues to please over at drawingboard.
I have plans to create some larger scale finished pieces in pen an ink, and am investigating screen printing opportunities as I think it'd be nice to do them that way.
Perhaps create painterly backgrounds and screen the main action over the top.
The red images are the villian The Scarecrow.
I feel a little silly discussing these things, but I'm enjoying doing them very much so I'll leave it for you to think whatever you want.
Also - traditionally red on black is pretty hard to see, so humour me and enlarge the Scarecrow pics to see them a little better.
Batman does appear to have a stiffy there, but he doesn't.
It's symbolic - something proper art is supposed to include I believe.

Just Like a Bought One

More standing in the rain.
I have a few pals who refer to this as the $17 picture, because the heavy piece of watercolour paper I used was about $17.
It's shiny because I covered it with several layers of floor polish, which gives it a lovely depth.
I'll get it mounted sometime soon.
The shaft of light down the left is merely the sun, not the image.

South West Trip

My folks were visiting friends at a farm in the south west of the state.
I borrowed a digital camera to take some snaps.
The pictures are, in order of left to right
1) No, it's not Hobbiton, but a place called Campania.
2) The sign at a truck stop that always makes me laugh. I always grab a bite to eat there and I can assure you all that it is not even remotely the best food ever. The food could win a prize as most FRIED ever, but not BEST.
3) An actual billabong, that a swagman could drown himself in, in traditional Australian fashion.
4,5,6,7,8 & 9) The ruins of a small hut on the farm, possibly built by convicts. You can see the marks in the bricks where they were chiselled out of the rock. They aren't that old compared to anything European - Australia was only settled by white folks about 220 years ago. In #9 you can see the new farm up on the hill.
10) The view of the Carlton River and valley from the farm.
11,12,13,14,15) A row of mouldering old sewing machines with marvellous patterns reflecting when they were built.
16) The mummified corpse of a wallaby, found preserved at the bottom of a large pile of hay.
17) Part of the new house - the finest home studio space I've ever seen in with my own eyes.

If anyone would like to see some higher res versions of any of the individual pictures, let me know and I'll email them to you.

Art Farty

I've had a bunch of my work in a local gallery for a while now and am pleased to say there's been a lot of interest.
This stuff has all been posted on here before but I thought it was nice to revisit it.
These pictures aren't great quality, but it's always nice to see your own work in a gallery, just like proper art.







This is a detail of the image above.

Kids Stuff

3 years ago, baby Ashleigh was born.
I don't recall if it was requested or if I offered to create these murals for her bedroom walls.
It's all acrylic (real paint and real brushes!) and they're still hanging, although I imagine not for too much longer.
I was always very proud of them.

And similarly themed, you may recall these dogs I did for a charity auction?
Well the four of them went for $260 Australian.
All to separate bidders which was strange I thought.

Happy Birthday

Something I do regularly but you don't get to see that often.
Actual art made with actual, real life pen and paper!
The main reason I don't post them that often is because they are large and detailed and hard to photograph.
This is an image I've done for a friends upcoming 50th birthday.
Someone suggested I should have done 50 little characters and they were 100% correct.
Not sure why it didn't occur to me.
It's always very pleasing to me to see my own work mounted and framed professionally.

Also - I have directed my friends towards this remarkable blog before - Limbolo.
He posted this wonderful image, something I am quite sure my art pals back on the mainland will love as much as I.

More Batman

I draw a lot of people standing in the rain.
Why this is I cannot tell, for I do not know.
Perhaps it is simply pleasing for me to draw.
Considering the fact that I know next to nothing about comic books and such I seem to be hooked on this Batman business...

Toilet Humor

At my last job, there were obviously a number of men who had gone plops in the loo and left a poo stripe and not taken the toilet brush to it to clean up.
The cleaners (well I assume it was them) left a note stuck to the inside of the door that read -

"In the interests of good manners and simple hygiene, please use the toilet brush provided".

Under which some clever soul had written -

"Thank you, but I prefer to use the paper".

I'm not sure why this has come to mind this second but I used to find it extremely amusing.

A New Series

Brother Gruel

Brother Gruel was so sick of waitin'.
All the praying and silence and trainin'.
He thought, "Oh well,
Let's all go to hell"
And instead started worshipping Satan.

Brother Candle

Young Brother Candle, of the light, was afraid.
He hated outside (unless there was shade).
He sat in his room,
In the dark and the gloom,
And thought "What mistakes I have made"...

Brother Wallet

Brother Wallet, despite his devotion,
Was fond of some hand on knob motion.
The rest didn’t know,
And he never did show,
Why he used so much skin care cream lotion.

Penguins and Koalas and Dutchman and Swarthy Spaniard Types

1) Penguins - I'm getting some very positive feedback on drawingboard.org with these Penguin pictures. There are plenty of comic fans there who are very passionate and clued in to the whole heroes and villians business so their feedback, apart from being positive is also meaningful.

2) Koalas - I may be being horribly presumptuous here, but if you pop on over to the endlessly useful and inspiring blog of animation champion Uli Meyer and scroll down a few posts, you will find a terrific drawing of a koala that I would like to think I played some small part in the creation of. It's name at least anyway - it's a rather jolly looking character which I am not really at all.

3) Dutchman - Boris, who I referred to yesterday, would like it to be known by all that he's not German at all. He's Dutch. I have alerted the media. CNN are on standby to cover the story.
Cheers Boris : )

4) Swarthy Spaniard Types - perhaps it is merely my own aesthetic interests, but has anyone else noticed the volume of sensational art coming out of our Mexican/Spanish/South American art friends? - and indeed from any other Swarthy Spaniard Types I'm not familar with!
There is of course plenty of great art across the blog world, but not with the consistancy and level of skill and uniqueness these nations seem to be able to create.
Something cultural that lurks in the hearts of them all perhaps?
Who knows?
There is so much to respond to from these amazing artists.