Paddy's Evening Out

A small picture book with no text by John S. Goodall, it has to be one of the first books that i ever owned. The hard cover is now separated from the pages at the spine from over use back in the day.

Paddy, a pig, goes on a date to a show with dancing girls, magicians, acrobats and a live orchestra - i suppose a kind of variety show... He and his partner are given balcony seats in a BOOTH up on one side the stage. While waving her fan, his partner looses it over the edge of the balcony, and in reaching to catch it, Paddy goes over the edge. The book is him running around trying to hide and not make an arse of him self in public - and failing.

The book has half page flaps that drive the story by allowing smaller incremental changes for each page, which i though was brilliant as a kid, and still do, as it turns out.

Acrobat

Submission for this weeks Illustration Friday topic "Acrobat".

Chance to try Painters Tinting brushes - i quite like them!

The Bear

Another in the Animal Series i'm working on.

Started this a while back and abandoned it as it wasn't clicking for me, but have it done now.....

The Octopus

Finally! Back to the animal series, and the octopus is complete.

This too a lot longer than the others because of the suckers and tentacles.

Damn near killed me....

Girl And Bear

Saw some pencil work recently that reminded me of how wonderful pencil work can be. I particularly like pencil for soft toys and children so, in an attempt to get away from using Painter's Artist Oils brushes and have ago at the Pencil brushes, I went with doing a bit of both.

But as i have been doing a lot of fairly straight ahead nice work, I couldn't help adding a little bit of blood to this one...

Update: Submitted this for Illustration Friday topic: Trail.

The Gorilla

Don't afraid. He only eats graps...

One in a series of animals I'm working on.

This took a while, primarily because of the hair. First real attempt at doing any kind of hair, and it was tricky getting both the colour right and the underlying form of the muscle looking right.

The Newt

He's really quite serious.

One in a series of animals I'm working on.

Interesting Woking on the skin and trying to get it to look the smooth semi-translucent look these guys have. Never realised there were so many variation in the colours too. Awesome.

The Parrot

"Squawk - fancy that!"

One in a series of animals I'm working on.

Really quite happy with the attitude caught in this one, and with the way the feathers turned out - without having to go into too much detail.

The Koala

Drunk on eucalyptus leaves, it sleeps high in the tree.

One of a series of animals I'm working on.

Creature

A blend of maybe elephant, tortoise and insect. If I thought I wouldn't ruin it by continuing, I'd paint in the small fire it's supposed to be standing beside, that is warming the girl who was lost on the coast where it lives.

Maybe I'll revisit it later....

Australian Christmas

Headed back to the sunshine of home for Christmas 2009, and painted this as a Christmas card to irritate the loved ones we'd left behind to what turned out the be one of the most bitterly cold winters on record in Ireland.

Having spent the previous 4 Christmas' in the northern hemisphere, I've come to see the relevance the of icicles, snow men, and rugging up warm connotations that come with this time of year. This was my boys second Christmas, the first being in Ireland, and i wanted to see how he'd go building a snow man in the sand.

Boy With Match (Reflection Study)

Along the same lines as the reasons for the Bluebottle Boy picture - children and dangers - this came after my boy manages to lock me out in the backyard.

This is the imaginings of him locking me out, then finding a match. It was also an attempt at getting a better understanding of painting reflections.

Blue Bottle Boy

When my son was about 8 months old, i began thinking about the potential dangers he would face at he grew, and about things that i had to look out for when i was young.

When i was young, we visited the grandparents at their house on the northern beaches of Sydney. We spent a lot of time learning to swim and splashing around there, but there was always the danger of the painful sting of the Portuguese Man-O-War, or as most coastal Australians call them, Bluebottles.

Throw in an unrelated fascination for the biggification of the small, and floating things, and this is the result.