Blues Portrait Series: Charley Patton

This is Charley Patton. He is like the Grandmaster Flash of the Delta Blues.

Blues Portrait Series: Bessie Smith

You been a good ol' wagon, Daddy but you done broke down.

Blues Portrait Series: Blind Lemon Jefferson

Hello again! Well, aren't you in for a treat? This is a watercolour of Bluesman, Blind Lemon Jefferson. He is part of a series of blues portraits (does three count as a series?) which will grow and grow... with enough motivation, I guess.

Old Factory

Once again, a Wacom trace. I think this is an old factory near Balmain-Rozelle. Let me find out and I'll get back to you. It's quite dilapidated and rusty and pretty cool looking. I wonder if it has squatters. Let me find out and I'll get back to you.

Richard Enjoys a Stogie

This is my friend and housemate, Richard. He LOVES cigars.

Party Tigers

Sydney Hospital

This is a more recent Wacom trace of Sydney Hospital. This took quite a long time considering it was all done in one sitting. Gosh, almost 4 and half hours... something like that. I particularly like tracing buildings because, to tell you the truth, I am absolutely atrocious at drawing buildings. They are beyond me! Hopefully this will help me improve a little, or at least kid myself for a while.

Wacom vs. QVB

Hello again. It's been a while. This is my first serious experiment with a Wacom Intuos3 (xmas pressie :) and I'm quite fond of it. It is a trace of a photograph using the pencil tool on Illustrator . I can't really take that much credit for a trace as I do consider it a form of cheating. But cheating has never been such fun!!

Akira Isogawa

This is a pencil drawing of the fashion designer Akira Isogawa. To be completely honest with you, I did not draw this because I have a particularly affinity with the man, rather it was the photograph. I saw this very striking black and white portrait in some design magazine and loved the deep shadows and contrast so much that I spent about four days drawing it.

Time for Icecream

This one is particularly special for me. This is taken from a polaroid taken by Haidee in the early days of my house. From left to right it is Rob(that's me!), Amy and Alex with the (literally) shady icecream man behind us. We were so lucky because just as Haidee was about to take the photo, a giant barn owl landed on the van.

Lovers

This is an ink and watercolour drawing of Ian Brady and Myra Hindley. I'm not the type who is particularly into serial killers or advocates them in any way. I just thought they had interesting faces and wondered what they would look like in colourful clothes.
This actually started an idea I had about creating a series of couples drawings. It would consist of all different kinds of couples, human, animal, plants even objects. I thought that would be nice. Maybe I'll get around to actually doing it one day. Please hold me to it and keep in touch!

A Book from Leeds

So, at this point I'm really scraping the barrel. These are some scans of a sketchbook I kept while I was in Northern England. At the time it was all just fine liner doodling and watercoloured many months later.

Butterfly Music

This is was drawn with coloured pencil and a black marker on some very brittle old sheet music I found in my Grandfather's garage.

Tea & Paper

This is a kind of series, in style at least. They were originally made as part of a portfolio to present during the entrance exam of my course. They are very much the result of a tea-stain sepia obsession that I am still in, as are most of you out there! Then it's just fine liner and watercolour (but not on watercolour paper! the horror.)
Perhaps when I build this collection (God knows if i'll ever get around to it) I might find some better thematic link because at the moment, they seem to be floating around as free individuals and we certainly don't want that!

Mashed

This was for a project. We had to illustrate and design a first edition cover for a magazine titled "Mashed". I added some extra texture in the background. That's from a crumbly old wall on my street. My teacher asked me if the men were an elderly gay couple. I actually hadn't thought about that, but it sounds pretty good to me.

The Men's Club

This was actually just a little sketch in an A5 book that I thought could colour up quite nicely. Not sure what's going on exactly. Let's just say that the man and his son are looking at a treasure map and we'll leave it at that. Please don't mention the wonky perspective- I know all about it :(

Fiddler on the Fungus

Charm the Pants Off

She has just made him a cup of coffee and she is much too far away. This is partly taken from the work of another illustrator from the fifties. I'll have to check his name and get right back to you.

Jealousy on Venus

This is a scanned pencil drawing coloured in photoshop. It's quite large, A3 I believe. Had to scan it in twice and align the two halves. Was going to colour the whole thing but my laptop didn't allow it. Something to do with scratch disks, whatever on earth they are. If you know anything about scratch disks and how to empty them, please let me know. Otherwise it was a happy error as too much colour could have killed the poor thing.

First Entry

I'm new to this.
To be honest, I've never read a blog in my life.
Not my cup of tea.

Won't bore you too much with words.
Will try to work out how to post some drawings though.
take care,
Rob