I’ve recently been diving in to the wonderful tutorials and art lessons by former Disney animator and wildlife artist Aaron Blaise. I’m always interested in the work of other artists, and it’s been really refreshing for me to put my own ideas and techniques aside for a while and learn some new ways of thinking, […]
Illustration
Lioness
A digital/Photoshop study of a lioness that I copied by following a demonstration by Aaron Blaise.
Animation experiment
I’ve always loved animations and cartoons. I have dabbled with a few little things over the years, but have recently been studying a few more techniques and processes online. This is an early effort with a hand-drawn animation that is based upon drawings by Preston Blair. It’s a very challenging art form, but tremendously rewarding […]
Australian decimal currency designs
Australian decimal currency banknotes have a fascinating design history. A 1968 Penrose Annual article by renowned graphic designer Alistair Morrison provides a detailed account of the working methods of the team of graphic designers who collaborated on Australia’s first decimal currency banknotes. In early 1963 the Commonwealth Government announced that a new decimal currency system […]
Here there be Tygers
I have a real interest in design history and I often find inspiration from early styles of graphic art. I recently acquired another copy of The Penrose Annual from a second-hand book store and as usual it contains a treasure trove of images and designs. I love this old advertisement for Kodak in the style […]
Animals of Tasmania
Animals of Tasmania: Wildlife of an Incredible Island is a book that documents and describes a host of Tasmanian species, including the iconic Tasmanian Devil, the mysterious Thylacine, the magnificent Wedge-tailed Eagle and the endangered Orange-bellied Parrot. These animals and many more have their own stories of survival, tragedy and hope in one of the […]
Antarctic wildlife watercolours
In 1990 I completed a series of Antarctic wildlife drawings and watercolours. This series, called Southern Life, was purchased by the University of Tasmania for their fine art collection. Later, in 2007, they were on display in an exhibition at the University. It was a great honour to exhibit work alongside George Davis and Fred […]
Book cover and author website
Tasmanian author Russell Kelly approached me to design and illustrate a book cover for his new novel Only The Empty Sky. I loved the story that Russell had written and quickly became very inspired by the challenge of producing a classical natural history style illustration to suite the tone of the text. Developing the concept […]
Your day in the stars
This is a series of zodiac signs that I completed for the Mercury‘s daily guide to the stars . It was nice to be able to explore a few different concepts for some of the signs and to try to break away a little from the more common interpretations of the zodiac. My favourite is […]