SOLD! “Jack Russell” Dog Vest

It’s nice to know somebody appreciates my work. Although I must admit, this was a rather calculated attempt at making a sale.

For a start it’s amazing how much people love their animals and it seems people are willing to spend as much money on their pets as they do on themselves. Aside from this, writing the words Jack Russell in the same font and format as the “Jack Daniels’ — Tenessee Whiskey” logo may have given the design a cool hint of familiarity for anyone that way inclined.

Anyway, a sale’s a sale even if I did only make a couple of dollars on it.

Pity I couldn’t get a Jack Russell to model it for me. But he is cute!

Check it out on the Zazzle site here

Playing with Patterns

It’s amazing what you can learn on the internet these days. 

Using a couple of New Zealand souvenir designs I created a couple of months ago I created these repeating patterns for an iPad cover. Thanks to a very helpful vector tutorial by Vectips it was actually pretty simple.

Now that I’ve figured out how to make a seamless pattern, there’s all sorts of applications this could be used for... I might even make the odd necktie! Watch this space...

I’ve posted this item for sale on Zazzle here and here

Obsessed with T-Shirts

I don’t know why I’ve been so obsessed with T-shirts lately. 

I think it has something to do with when I was a young teenager in the late 70’s. A friend of the family who had been to the US had brought back some souvenir t-shirts as gifts. They were so different from anything you could buy in NZ at the time. I loved them. They were a real pleasure to wear and the designs were quite inspiring for me as a young ‘wanna-be’ artist at the time.

Perhaps it’s the 30+ years of pent up desire to create a few of my own t-shirt designs that’s finally coming to the surface. Up until about a year ago there was no way I could manage the whole t-shirt printing process myself, from design to end consumer without forking out heaps of money — that is, until I stumbled across “Zazzle”. 

If you haven’t heard of Zazzle, you’ll no doubt hear me talk more about it on this blog, as it’s opened up a whole new way for me to showcase some of my work. At the same time it has made some of my designs available for sale to anyone who’s interested in buying a T-shirt, or any other product for that matter, including caps, mugs, aprons, tote bags, etc.

So, here are a few designs I’ve been working on...

This is how they looked on T-shirts...

Zazzle allows you to customise the various designs and products that are available. Choose your own t-shirt colours and styles, add your own text or put the design onto other products. Check it out here.

The ‘Four Square’ Store

I started acrylic painting several years ago and have been enjoying it whenever I can get to it. Unfortunately I don’t have as much time to spend on it as I would like.

Here’s a painting I did last year from an old photo. 

This was a deeply personal painting for me as the photo was taken by a relative a few years before I was born. These shops are less that a block from the house where I grew up and only about 5 kilometres from where I currently live. All but 2 of the people in the scene are family members including my grandfather who has long since passed away and my parents who were courting at the time. I love the old cars (the model T ford and the 'Morri thou' van) which give the scene a real historic flavour. The Model T ford belonged to one of my uncles who like me also enjoys painting. The van belonged to the shop owner, who is also one of my uncles.

I tend to approach my paintings as a typical 'graphic designer' would, that is, in a very controlled and predictable way. I usually work from a photo or other carefully planned reference even if it’s a sketch or an illustration I’ve already drawn. I usually have a very clear idea of what I’m trying to do before I even start.

What I did to start was to enlarge the original photo on a photocopier to the final size I needed it. Then I rubbed the back of it with a 4B pencil following the edges of all the main elements, producing a stencil. Then I transferred the image by drawing over the top of the stencil with a ball point pen using enough pressure to transfer the pencil rubbing to the canvas, all the while making sure the stencil didn’t move. If you look carefully, you can see the finished pencil outline on the canvas (above).

Then it was time to start painting. I started with all the broad areas of colour first. In this case the road in the foreground and then the sky area. Then working colour by colour, area by area, I gradually covered the canvas with paint.

I’ve had the painting hanging in my front room for a while now, even though I’m not totally satisfied it’s finished. It’s been a great talking point as many visitors to the house have commented on it. Most of them frequent the location where this scene is, which is now a thriving multi-level shopping complex, complete with McDonalds and other big brand mega stores. Most of them have no idea it’s the same place.

What about you? Can you guess where it is? 

It’s somewhere on Auckland’s north shore around 1958. 

If you look carefully you can see Rangitoto island (a dormant volcano) in the background.

This how it looks today, more than 50 years later...

The New Creative Blog

I've been meaning to start a "Creative" blog for some time but have been procrastinating as usual.

I've been working and playing in the creative world for practically my whole life. I decided at age 8 that I wanted to be an artist when I grew up – not that I had much in the way of any 'natural' talent – I just loved being creative... with pens, pencils, crayons, felt tips, paint... you name it.

Amazingly, I've been working – and surviving, as a freelance Graphic Designer in Auckland since 1986. Before this I served an apprenticeship as a sheet-fed printer starting in 1980, after all my efforts at getting into a "Graphic Artist" position had failed. I started off learning letterpress printing techniques which introduced me to different ways of being creative. It was more mechanical than anything else I'd done before – it was great, I loved it!

I soon learned the value of turning my art into something commercially viable. It's something I'm still working on today — 3 decades later.

My reasons for creating this blog are firstly as an outlet for showing off some of the things I've done in the past and am doing currently. But I've also been told that blogging can be good for business and that if anything's being created for commercial reasons, people eventually need to know about it.

So, I hope that what I have to show and tell will be of interest and I welcome any feedback. I'll be creating links to examples of work I've done that are already on the internet and to sites where, if you like what I've done enough, you might even like to purchase something.

Please feel free to comment.

Thanks for visiting my blog!