Derby crazy #1: Fresh Meat sketches

Click on an image to enlarge!

One reason for my tardiness in updating my site this year has been my blossoming involvement in the glorious yet time-gobbling world of ROLLER DERBY! I drew these fierce and colourful fictional ladies during my Fresh Meat training with the wonderful Adelaide Roller Derby while I was learning basic skills, and the oft-spoken-of derby obsession was only starting to take hold. They are sketchy scribbles, dashed off in the flush of enthusiasm but much as I might itch to re-draw this wonky wheel or that disproportionately-long limb, instead I present them to you here in all their imperfect, excited glory – much like new derby skaters at their first scrimmage! Enjoy – my first derby-related art post, but very unlikely to be my last.

Bonnie Adventuress!

 

Another card, this time for my lovely, one-of-a-kind buddy Bonnie on the occasion of her intrepid solo bike tour around New Zealand following Adelaide Roller Derby’s visit with (and victorious bout against) Auckland’s Pirate City Rollers last year. She’s an adventuress and no doubt about it!

With a ho ho ho

It seems an age ago now, but in the lead-up to the silly season I was hard at work on a varied suite of illustrations to accompany letters from Santa. That’s right, FROM Santa! As I’m sure you’re able to deduce for yourself, it logically follows that my client was none other than St. Nick himself. You see, Santa’s quite a wordsmith, but has never been any great shakes at drawing, and what with Mrs. Claus’ arthritis setting in, I was the natural choice to decorate the letters!

I particularly enjoyed drawing all the different elf-kids and the various Woodland hanger-onners of their tree. I have it on good authority that rather than rudely separate all the critters from their stubbornly-defended lodgings, the elves just decorated around them!

The little grey cat was a constant attendant to proceedings …

 

Goofy Caricature Cards

This will be the first of a relentless slew of long-overdue updates! A couple of caricature commissions for birthday cards, for some particularly excellent personages about town. The first was for a Fashion Disaster / Op Shop themed birthday. The second, well, who can say, sometimes you take a brief in a new direction and that direction is RECEIVED WITH MUCH JOY AND HILARITY BY THE CLIENT!

Shiloh the Pirate!

Yaaargh! Avast! Trim the mainsails! Shiver me blasted blue-barnacle-encrusted, jolly-rum-do timberoonies!

Who says no good comes of reading glossy, gossipy magazines? If I hadn’t been perusing the celebrity rumour-rags one fine day recently, I wouldn’t have been inspired by a certain pint-sized tomboy Jolie-Pitt and her pirate-themed birthday party hijinks! The fuss these magazines make of a little girl choosing natty vests instead of frilly dresses is just absurd, but I say she always looks like she’s having far more fun than little what’s-her-name Holmes-Cruise in the pointy high-heels. With a yo-ho-ho and a bottle of OJ!

Maddy’s Dilemma

Kids these days! Using the internet like they were born to it … which, I guess, some of them were. This was a commission to illustrate a scenario for an internet-decision-making resource for primary school children. The teacher would show the image and read out the scenario to their class: in this case, Maddy has already tried all the games on a ‘safe’ kids’ website, and is trying to decide whether to search for a new site without asking her Mum. After hearing the scenario the kids would discuss what they might do in Maddy’s shoes, and why. This illustration was hand-drawn and coloured with a tablet using Photoshop.

 

Character development

Doodles of a character I’m working on. She loves her bike, and is having trouble getting used to boarding school!

 

Undone!

“The bats beat their wings in a terrible rhythm. They stirred up a storm of squealing fury. My feet left the ground. I was flying.”

- Paul Jennings, ‘BATTY’, from ‘Undone!’ Penguin Books 1993

“Anthony nodded his branches at me. ‘Mnn, nmng, nn,’ he said.

I didn’t know what it meant. Probably something like, ‘You embarrassed me. Now it’s your turn.’ “

- Paul Jennings, ‘NOSEWEED’, from ‘Undone!‘ Penguin Books 1993

Re-reading Paul Jennings’ books is a treat. There are always a few stories that I’d completely forgotten, whose endings fill me with fresh surprise and delight. And while they really don’t need pictures – everything’s there in the stories – some moments just cry out to be drawn, even if it’s just for the fun of it. Here are a couple of those moments – the ones I couldn’t resist scribbling down the instant I finished reading. BATTY and NOSEWEED. How did these characters end up like this? Go and read Undone! – you won’t regret it!

Group portrait (with a guest star)

Yep, I occasionally draw adults too, in case you’d been wondering! This group portrait / caricature was commissioned by my housemate and features her workmates … and … their dream date, a certain Mr Obama! They look like they’re somewhere suitably swanky, too.

Kids’ Portraits #3

One more portrait from last summer’s bumper crop of kids’ portraits for Christmas gifts, but this one had the distinction of being a gift for the little girl herself, rather than her parents. Mataya loves her labrador, so a special somebody commissioned this picture to brighten up Mataya’s room and help her learn to spell her own name and Tao’s.

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