Krampuses for 2020

The original 2017 krampus

The original 2017 krampus

If you have been fantasising about various political figures getting whisked away by demonic goat men you are in luck. I have rejigged my articulated krampus and made it available to download and print out, free for personal use and school teachers. Feel free to add your own characters to the naughty basket, if I get time I will add some more to download, I quite enjoyed doing the caricatures, Bezos and Bolsanaro definitely need to be in there too. I’d love to see where they end up, if you want to share them with me use the tag #somesuchkrampus

There is a page of instructions, you will need to glue the print out onto some card to make it more sturdy and will need paper fasteners (called ‘brads’ in the US because of course they are), though they could probably be improvised with thumbtacks at a pinch.

If you feel like it in lieu of payment consider donating to one of these charities

https://www.amnesty.org.nz/
https://www.savethechildren.org.nz/
https://www.aucklandcitymission.org.nz/
https://www.theconsciouskid.org/donate
https://antiracismfund.org/
https://www.joincampaignzero.org/



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Go Girl

I was excited and delighted to be asked to contribute some portraits to Go Girl, a new book by Barbara Else which celebrates New Zealand women. My portraits are of Kate Sheppard, Valerie Adams, Lucy Lawless, Suzanne Aubert and Ella Williams.

For more info about the book and where to find it can be found here
https://www.penguin.co.nz/books/go-girl-9780143771609

Atomic Forest!

 

New Zealand's finest illustrators come together for an Auckland Artweek exhibition of post-apocalyptic, pop-art pleasure. Get a glimpse into a post-nuclear wonderland, full of weird and wonderful characters.

Come hang out with us and grab a cold beer courtesy of Garage Project on the opening night this October 7th and check out our latest round of artwork as well as some of our greatest hits for sale.

Funded by Heart of the City and delivered in partnership with Artweek Auckland.

 

Paperback Assassins

 

I'm part of an illustration collective called Paper Assassins and we've been working on a new exhibition coming up as part of Artweek Auckland in October. We're transforming a shop in the Chancery in Auckland's CBD into an alternative universe bookshop, there'll be a range of fantastical book themed artworks, specially designed ex libris bookplates and a place where you can print and colour your own bookplates.

The 10 awesome illustrators on board are: Rebecca ter Borg, Marc Conaco,  Pablo Espinosa, Toni Gill, Chris Hutchinson aka Chippy, Sloane Kim, Toby Morris, Colleen Pugh, Ezra Whittaker-Powley and myself. 

The opening night is Saturday the 8th of October from 6-9pm, sponsored by Budweiser and we also have a late night (til 9pm) on Wednesday the 12th with the Quick Draw Sketch Gang doing live portraits and a kids activity day on the closing Sunday the 16th with lots of activities planned. Come along!

 

Liking

 

I did a piece for Metro Magazine's last issue which was choc full of amazing illustrators. My bit was to go with a short story, Liking: a tale about online dating by Jenni Quilter. Jenni is a NZ writer who has been published in The New Yorker, you can read her excellent story here http://www.metromag.co.nz/city-life/liking-a-tale-about-online-dating/

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I ended up doing scanned layers of pencil drawings instead of my usual painting with gouache, this is the final version. I wanted the guy to look sorta friendly/sleazy and a bit predatory so I drew him as a crocodile.

An earlier colour palette.

Pencil sketch.

Another idea, didn't end up going with this.

And another sketch option.

 

Artweek Auckland 2015

 


I've created a page for Colour Your Own Adventure,  an interactive art activity which is part of Artweek Auckland. Members of the public are invited to colour in and draw on giant illustrated dreamscapes created by local Auckland artists.

This event will be up from the 10th - 17th of October in Chancery Square in the CBD. More info here

Here are a few details

It was quite fun to do such flat, linear work. A few years back I used to do lots of crazy stacked up landscapes/cityscapes, it was nice to get back to that sort of work, love adding funny characters and architectural details.

Here's one of my older pieces which I was referring back to, I like the contrast between empty and full space in this one. The house in the middle at the bottom with the ponga/palm tree outside and pyramid on the roof is a homage to one of my old flats.

 

Auckland Zinefest posters and merch

 

I was on the organising committee for the Auckland Zinefest so got to design the poster. We wanted something which could be reproduced in black and white or just one colour. I went with this monster design as the zinefest is a strange beast!

Here is the same creature partying at the after party, this poster was just for online use so could have colours in it.

The poster image and text was reworked for this facebook event banner.

Then we printed it on tees and totebags

 

New zines

 

I've made some new zines for the zinefest as well as reprints of some older ones. 

This one is about inappropriate thoughts.

This one is a follow up to Shorty visits the vet Issue #1 which I made last year. It's about my cat's cystitis. The last one was all done in ink but this time I went digital. I don't do fully digital work that often but I found it really ...addictive. 

 

McGlashan in Metro

 
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I was totally delighted to be asked by Metro Magazine to do a portrait of the ledgendary NZ musician Don McGlashan. I tried to use the same colours as his latest album Lucky Stars and drew him from a video of a performance at The 13th Floor. 

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The finished illustration.

The Album cover from Don's latest album, Lucky Stars. I tried to encorporate some of the colours and textures from this in my illustration.

The Album cover from Don's latest album, Lucky Stars. I tried to encorporate some of the colours and textures from this in my illustration.

My preliminary sketch

My preliminary sketch

 

Kawe

 
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I was asked to create a work to sell in the Auckland Museum shop as part of the Taku Tāmaki - Auckland Stories exhibition which opens this weekend. After getting briefly sidetracked by mantle dogs (more on them later) I decided to paint the magnificent breadwood sculpture Kawe , which greets visitors to the Pacific Lifeways Gallery.

Kawe is believed to be a malevolent goddess who got up to tricks when the  god Iaigausema was absent,  creating natural disasters and the like. An article from the New Zealand Herald,  1878 in  typical exoticising colonial tones ( "it is ... a proof of the barbarous and primitive worship that obtains in some of the islands"*) suggests  she sat upon an alter overseeing human sacrifices. Another article I found suggested it was children who were sacrificed before her, whilst I'm weary of the Victorian (and/or current) western tradition of exoticising non-western cultures as 'savage', I liked the dark undertone which the carving's real or supposed history lent to the image, with a child standing in awe of her. 

* Quote found on this excellent blog post about Kawe

 

I documented my progress fairly well which is pretty unusual for me, here it is:

 
 
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Blurry cellphone shots for reference..

 
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All done! I've had 50 archival prints made, printed using archival Ultrachrome inks on 340gsm archival paper. The paper has a nice slight texture similar to the paper I painted it on, they'll probably last longer than the original! I'll have them up for sale on my online shop too as soon as I've taken some good (not crappy cellphone) photos.

 
 
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