This week I am updating with a little foray into the land of children's book illustrations. I recently did the character design and interior illustrations for a book called Boomerang Babies, written by Nancee Helfert. It's a brand new book trying to make an impression in the large children's book market. The central theme of the book is safety and the story revolves around a cute platypus getting lost and learning a few tips to stay safe and get where she is going from her friends.

This week I will showcase the 3 main characters, and next week I'll show a selection of the interior art that I did for the book. 

First up is Puddles Platypus. She's the little girl who get's lost. 

 Next up is Joey Roo

 ...and Cuddles Koala

Welcome to April. I missed out on April fools because I'm extremely gullible, so I tend to hide under my desk fiddling with the USB connectors in order to avoid public embarassment. The blog is late in posting, which is a good thing because it means I have been keeping busy. This week I did a few quick searches looking for interesting objects to draw and put a bit of a fantasy twist to them.

The first one is called "Frog Thing" a kind of amphibian from the black lagoon.

 The seond in the series is called "The Alchemist" It's a serious looking fellow seeking the elixir of life. Serious businiss...

 The last one is called "Portal to Hades". This one happens to be in an outhouse. Not sure what I was thinking when I came up with that. 

 Tune in again early next week for a showcase of some children's book work I've done recently. 

This week's installment was delayed much by sickness and the Easter holidays. Happy Easter to those who celebrate it!

The theme this week is "landscape speedpaintings". These ones are full colour digital paintings done in under half an hour. They help establish mood for an environment quickly. I've been working on a personal idea that involves icebergs so two of the pieces involve floaty blocks of frozen water. The other piece is a castle I liked the look of that I sketched out quick. This one took a bit longer than half an hour thanks to all the architectural details. Next week's theme is "found objects with fantasy sauce".

On to the sketches!!

This week I decided to push my portrait sketches a bit. The idea was to take an expression from ref and then either caricature it or add some sort of fantastic element to give it a bit of a story. With no further ado, the art!!

Next week: Landscape Speedpainting

Post number one of my sktechblog. I sketch for about a half an hour at the start of every work day to warm up. Normally I just do gestures but for the purposes of this blog and to challenge me to move out of my comfort zone I'm going to try sketching to a theme each week. This week I picked portraits.

I've used a combination of techniques and just played around with trying to get the likeness down fast.

 Enjoy!!