A couple of new illustrations I did the other day for a Melbourne zine.  The first is to accompany a story about heavy handed Connex ticket enforcers in Melbourne, I'm not sure what the second is for... was described a Mary statue defaced as above.

Engage.

Paul. Engage. Ink & watercolour on Arches CP paper. 700 x 560mm. Experimenting with my medias for this one. Its made up of many layers of dilute Indian ink with added gum arabic.

More pics at http://www.flickr.com/people/larkk/

Canberra Tweed Ride Poster Art.

Image I did the other day for a poster advertising a Tweed bicycle ride in September. I'm a cyclist myself, but I don't go in for any of that lycra and carbon fibre nonsense. Guess that's why the tweed ride idea appeals to me; vintage bikes & threads, slow paced leisurely cycling with lots of pub/cafe/picnic stops. Lycra racing heroes piss me off, as they can be pretty obnoxious to cyclists and pedestrians alike. Tweed rides make a point of being super polite on the road. I like that. Think this is the fourth or fifth tweed run to be held in Canberra since the first in June 2009.

Working large

An artist I know suggested I try working large. This is my first experiment doing so. It's my mate Dominika (http://captio.wordpress.com/) playing laptop games in the dark. Double or triple life size approx. Indian ink on Arches CP paper. The hair, reflections & highlights are all scratching and sanding (scrafitto technique) into the inked paper. I like working big, and fun to use bigger brushes... got some cheap housepainting & bristle style ones I've been playing with.

Also, Engage #10 (below) is currently showing at the Mosman Art Prize. One of the more prestigious art prizes in Australia, it attracted almost 1000 entries this year. Was pretty stoked to be one of those selected to hang. One my way home, stopped into Parker's Art Supplies in The Rocks and bought a 10 X 1.5 metre roll of paper for more big works.

Blackened Slugs

Recently attempted a metal style banner logo for "Blackened Slugs" a review website and distro in the US, specialising in Doom/Drone/Black metal genres. They do distro for some Monarch (French drone doom) and Grey Daturas (Australian instrumental noise rock) records in the US. Two bands I really dig. Hadn't done a metal logo since high school, more than 10 years ago.

The banner art was was done freehand in black indian ink & wash on Canson watercolour paper. I used a vintage ruling pen, and scrawled the ink freehand. The hard whites are scratched into the paper. The crusty bits of dried ink that collect at the mouth of the bottle were mixed in around the edges.

http://blackenedslugs.blogspot.com/

"Engage"

"Engage" gamer portrait reference photographs

I take reference photographs for the series of gamer portraits I am currently working on. I set up a camera on a tripod right in front of the TV, and use a remote shutter release held right away from the screen. If possible, I prefer to take shots where the only light in the room is cast from the screen, which at times makes for some interesting shadows and colouring. This requires a fairly fast lens and a fairly high ISO; I use a Nikon D7000 with a 50mm f1.4 prime lens. The D7000 has an image sensor that works very well in low light. Car racing games seem to work best, as the camera can be placed right at the point of the screen that the player will be focusing on, without interfering with the gameplay. The photographs are quite interesting on their own so I thought I'd post a few I took the other day. Just opened a flickr account too, will upload a few of these soon. http://www.flickr.com/photos/larkk