Hi All!

Feeling a bit better lately. Got over being sick in about 4 days – blergh – reminds me how much I hate being sick!

So I’m picking things up again. Only a few sketches here and there and some more work on the preview I showed you all before.
They’re pretty crap but meh….Just some warm ups.


I like this one the best….

Other news….We had a HUGE storm here on Saturday. I saw it coming on the weather radar but wasn’t expecting hail. Stones the size of golf balls!! I was scared our skylight was going to break in. The sound was incredible and the cats where running around freaking out like it was Armageddon. The hail built up in our courtyard as we are on the bottom of a small hill and the drains were way too full to contain all the downpour. I was ready with towels in case the water came high enough to reach the door. They didn’t – but only just…we were only about 1cm off! It looked like snow outside. The roof leaked a bit too but no major damage. All my sad little tomatoes which had only just started growing properly are now completely obliterated! Boo! The lemon tree survived though thank goodness.
So that was our storm – the city was in chaos with train stations shut down and many buildings closed because of leaking or even caved in roofs. Fire engines were screaming around everywhere. I hope no one was seriously hurt!

Well – back to playing around. Hope you’ve had a good weekend!

Super quick post today guys – Managed to get sick with a nasty cold/sore throat/runny nose thing and am feeling decidely MEH. Haven’t been sick in over a year (well over!) so I guess it was about due. Boo hiss.

Here is a sneak preview of something I started the other day. If you can guess the blogger then yay to you! You don’t win a prize cos I don’t have one haha. But have fun guessing. Maybe it’s too easy to guess? We’ll see.
Trying out how I go without leaning on the crutch that is linework.

See you all on the other side of this MEHness.

Hello!

Time for some art! I’ve finally finished the work for my other client – Renee at Beauty Fool asked me to draw her a new header for her site. She wanted a rough icon look in black and white, of a girl applying lipstick. She sent me some reference images as well as some of my own work that she liked. It didn’t take me long to whip up a sketch but and later the final art was done. Happily, we didn’t even need to do any revisions! Though I did make two versions, one with colour, only because I got a bit excited with the digital watercolour in Corel Painter. Up until I got my new computer, using the digi watercolours was just not an option as they are so realistic to use, my poor little laptop couldn’t cope with the heavy memory load. Painter mimics the wetness of the paint spreading across the paper in real time (if you choose it to) – you can adjust the drying time, spread of the paint, even the direction and strength of the wind pushing on the paint while it is drying.
My new Beast takes care of this with ease and I’m itching to play around with these tools along with the other ‘real’ paints like acrylic and oil. Yay!

SO….here’s the black and white followed by the colour version.

I wanted to go fairly simple and subtle with the colour – the digi watercolour I used on the hair using a big wet bristle brush. It produces the nicest soft wash, it’ll be fun to try out different paper effects and layering later.

Anyways, back to work!

I’m back from my little holiday to Tasmania. Back to work today too. Eurgh. Hehe ;-P
We did a lot of fun things while there and also some relaxing things. I got to catch up on all the developments to the winery – since I last visited, my parents moved out of the old rundown house at the bottom of the property and into the converted winery. Dad raised the roof of the building to allow room for upstairs living quarters. He also moved his wood workshop out into a new purpose-built shed and where it used to belong is now the lounge and dining area.
Not everything is finished yet – the upstairs area only has walls so far – no windows and bare floorboards. Regardless, our bed was still comfy and the silence down there permits a good nights rest – except for when the rooster decides to crow at the ungodly hour of 3am!!
Downstairs is all complete however – the kitchen is fit for commercial use and will also be the kitchen for the cafe. Mum is super happy about having a brand new oven, stove and shiny industrial coffee machine. Essential! The lounge is nice and open and with plenty of space in comparison to the cramped, dark room in the old house. The best bit of the whole new living area is the massive outdoor area! Breakfast and most dinners can be had there as it’s sheltered from the elements. It’s good to sit outside and have breakkie

I took lots of photos this time surprisingly! Which is why I’m actually blogging about this in greater detail. Somewhat unsurprisingly though, my photos are neither a complete documentation of my trip, nor very good. Heh! So I present to you a selection of what I took. These were taken on the Thursday as I wandered around discovering stuff – Jonny was busy in Dad’s workshop playing with the Big Boys Toys.

Some veggies from the greenhouse:

The killing block (look away if you’re a veggo hehe) and some obligatory grapes

Jonny working on stuff and my Mum watering the plants

Cows (or bull to be precise)

Chickens & Ducks

Farm things

Flowers and timber

Bits and pieces from around the house

And finally, some things from the cellar door.

So there it is, a small glimpse into my parent’s winery. While there I also helped set up the St Imre website – which is now live and can be seen here: CLICKY. Still ironing a few things out and adding content. The blog is still not fully incorporated to look like the rest of the site. But getting there! You should soon be able to buy wine directly from the site. Yay!

Now it’s back to drawing and testing out how my wonderful new computer copes with some work.
Bye!

Eeeeeeeeeee it is here! My precious beasty beast. It is soooo shiny and FAST and super awesome.
It arrived yesterday just a little after 5pm after the delivery man almost sent my dreams dashing to the concrete by having a little trip on the front step! Yikes! I saw that box wobble and images flashed in front of my eyes of the little Apple logo laying forlornly amongst shattered glass and broken LED chips. Oh noes!!!!!

Never fear! The boxes made it inside where I immediately ripped them open and started to assemble my machine. Meanwhile you can imagine the fun the kitties had with the massive boxes! What is it with kitties and their insatiable love for cardboard and paper products?
My only small setback was having to install my Airport Express card (essential for geeking it up online), which is a task usually assigned to a qualified Apple tech as it requires delving into the guts of your computer. Thankfully it wasn’t too hard – if you’ve ever installed some RAM it’s not much more tricky than that. Handy to have small fingers as there is some serious fiddling involved trying to get these itty bitty cables to clip into their spots. I spent a good 20 minutes trying to put one in while keeping the frustration at bay.
After that I was good to go! Hook up all the cables in their appropriate places and turn it ON.

Behold, the SHINY:
(and my swanky office chair. Cool huh?)

(ugh cables)

Yaaaaaaaaaay!
And its sooooo FAST I just can’t believe it. I can power up Photoshop CS4 in three seconds flat (yes I counted)!!! That’s about 20 times faster than my MacPro at work – however that is bloated with 3D software and a virtual machine to run Windoze. But STILL.
Oh and I have named him Erebus – the Greek god of darkness and shadow, son of Chaos. See, I have this habit of naming my computers after Greek legends. Always loved the stories as a child and the names sound so cool. My work computer is called Icarus and the old Macbook Pro lappy is Prometheus.
But I have to go off to Tassie this weekend so I won’t get a chance to test out it’s prowess when it comes to actual work. When I get back I will get right onto that little test let me assure you.
Well I am off to pack for the trip. Early night tonight! Gotta be up at 3am. Eep.
Bya!

(and YES I know I am a SERIOUS geek shuddup)

Sup!
So this is my entry for this past week’s CHOW – Brief for the project is in my last post (Just to confuse you!)….Overall, I’m pretty MEH about it. Didn’t have enough time to do what I want with it and I suffered from not thinking things through fully again.
I got some great tips from the ConceptArt peeps – Skip the backgrounds for now if you’re unsure about them and watch your values and anatomy. Yup yup got it

Some work in progress and details…(click for bigger)

Now I should get back to doing my latest client project!!!
Bye

Hiiii!!
Finally I think I can show you this! I’ve been working on this for a lovely client and while it has gone through a COMPLETE redesign I think it has turned out well. The redesign being completely my own idea. It’s totally not ’standard procedure’ to completely start again and do something entirely new for a customer when they haven’t suggested it – but in this case I wasn’t overly happy with the way the other drawing was going and some random sketching brought about a new look which we now both agree looks better.
This is for her business card as she is a makeup artist and wanted a pretty girl with some flowing hair and makeup on.
I had a lot of fun doing the hair and thankfully my other client also specified flowing hair – YAY. So much fun I am going to get cracking and finish that one off too.

Other news….I just got back from a fantastic afternoon tea with some awesome bloggers…Get ready for the link love…I got to meet: Violet LeBeaux and her beau Jimmy, Super Kawaii Mama (squee! Starstruck!), Esme & the Laneway (omg too!), Nicole from Circa Vintage, Celeste (she has many many blogs!) and Natalie/Briar Rose. We went to the Cristina Re Where a Girl Goes store in Collingwood where we indulged in delicious sandwiches, quiche, macarons, cupcakes and chocolates. Oh, and TEA of course. Even though I’m not normally a tea drinker, I really enjoyed the different varieties they had on offer. Yum!!

Everything in that store is so ridiculously awesome and they even gave us some gift bags to take away with us. They have a bunch of pretty papers in them which I think I might use in some drawings. Yay! Everyone was dressed so impeccably too and the company was just fabulous. I shall have some photos for you in a future post.

Right now I have to get back to finishing a ConceptArt.org CHOW entry I started. The theme is The Magus…This is the brief:

The Magus

London, England 1907. Cyril Grey is the leader of the ‘Order of Shining Starres’, an occult organisation that aims to become the most dominant in Britain. Grey has access to some of the darkest forces of the astral realm, and demands complete devotion from his acolytes. He is a man obsessed and committed to the promulgation of his black bible, the Book of Regulation, or Liber Ordinatio said to have been dictated to him by a messenger from the gods that provided to him his magical motto, Sit Vis Vobiscum. He has inherited wealth, independence, and apparent youth; appearing little over 35. But there is talk that he is older and uses a ‘glamour’ to fool his followers. There is also talk of the wealth running out, and debts beginning to mount up; of pretenders to his position, and of… murder. Dark murder, as prominent figures in the occult underworld start to… go missing…

Design Grey in his ceremonial robes of office. Consider the historical period (Edwardian) and setting. Also consider his apparent age and powerful persona, and try to present that in your design.

Interesting! I stared it on a whim – just from a sketch of his face….which turned out alright. Hopefully things keep running smoothly and I can finish on time and still like the drawings. Expect more soon!

Ciao!