So, I’ve been seriously considering trying my hand at designing/illustrating greetings cards. I think it might be a good opportunity to get my art out there and make a bit of money at the same time… Been thinking of selling on Cafe Press or some such site & maybe even going around to some gift stores with examples of my work to see if they might be interested. I’ve started out by doing cards for my friends; this is what I’ve got so far (click on the thumbnails to view the larger image):

So I wanna know what your opinion is: Do you think it’s a good idea or a bad idea? Do I have a chance at success? Please leave your comments.

Hey, so I’m really keen to get this Threadless t-shirt thing to work out. It’s a really tough market, cos it’s so huge and they get hundreds and thousands of submissions – designs really have to be up to standard (and trends) to even have a hope of getting printed. So while I’m waiting to find out how my “This is not a tee” submission did (will find out tomorrow I think), I’ve decided to submit another design: “Amoeba Moe Learns About Procreation”. Check it out…

Hey, here’s my first ever Threadless submission – please get voting right away… you only have seven days!!

The design is sort of a tribute to Rene Magritte’s “This is not a pipe”, just with a little bit of a twist, read more about it on the website – go check it out.

Update: Thanks to everyone who rated my design. It has also won a runner’s up prize for the July Top 20 and will go into print – available for sale on the Springleap website.

This is my latest submission to the Springleap t-shirt design competition. If you like it, please visit the Springleap website and rate my design: http://www.springleap.com/designs/view/high-five

I tried to make the intent of this design obvious without having any copyright issues. The colours I chose just seemed right for a tee (though it has been brought to my attention that on some monitors the brown looks a lot darker, making the text difficult to read); I tried the background in red, plus a few other colour combinations, but it wasn’t working for me. As for the concept, I wanted to go for a parody of something well known, loved & hated; and because I love cartoons, the four fingered hand idea sort of stuck from the beginning of the thought process. At first I was thinking along the lines of whether or not it can be considered a zap if cartoon character shows you the finger; who can say for sure if it’s not the middle finger that’s actually missing. But, after much internal debate I decided to go for something more innocent. Since my friends love to high five (a lot), the idea came pretty naturally. Plus kudos must be given to the slugs from Flushed Away, the sad look on their little faces when the day is saved and they realise that they can’t high five… classic!

This is Neglected Teddy – the inspiration came from the Illustration Friday theme (forgotten) from some weeks ago. I immediately thought of the scene from Amelie, where they show the passage of time using a teddy bear sitting outside in a plant trough, with the seasons passing, getting older and more and more bedraggled – I thought it was a great idea.

And although I knew I wouldn’t be able to finish my artwork in time for Illustration Friday, I figured I’d use it to build up my portfolio – works well for children’s books, which I think would be really fun to work on. I know when I was a kid I spent way more time looking at the pictures than actually reading the books C’mon, admit it, you did too.

Also tried out a version of Teddy with faded edges. Which one do you like more? Please leave your comments.

Update 02/06/2008: Thanks to everyone for rating my design on Springleap – I’m happy to announce that I’ve won a runner’s up prize for DontCareBear. Awesome! You can buy your very own print of my tee at www.springleap.com

I did this design for a monthly t-shirt design competition on www.springleap.com and figured it also works for this week’s Illustration Friday topic “worry”, though it can be seen as more anti-topic, but hey. All in all, it’s provided a great reason for me to practice my wacom drawing skills; and having a winning design would definitely boost my chances of getting my name out there in the illustration/design world… the prizes would be nice to have too

So, if you like my design, please go to www.springleap.com and register to vote/rate my designs. I’d really appreciate it.

Here’s a quick link to my design: http://www.springleap.com/designs/view/dont-care-bear/page:1

And another entry of mine called “Super Emo Bro”: http://www.springleap.com/designs/view/super-emo-bro

Thanks for your support!

I recently got the most wonderful thing as a joint birthday present from myself and all my family… a Wacom Intuos3 pen tablet!!! Yay! I’ve been playing with it as much as I possibly can and am already getting the feeling of “how did I ever manage without it?” – Yes, it’s that wonderful. So what better way to test/use my new toy than doing something for illustration friday. This week’s theme is pet peeve – I can’t say it’s my favourite, but hey; at first I wasn’t sure what to draw, so then I thought “what annoys me more than anything else in the whole world?” – the first thing that popped into my mind was cockroaches. Yugg, evil little things, who ever thought I’d want to draw one… but there it is.

Wow, two posts in one day… maybe it’ll rain – oh, I hope so!!!

Anyways, this is my submission for the 4th International Tolkien Themed Art Competition in Poland. Wish I’d heard about the other three, but no matter. I actually stumbled across this one quite randomly – am very grateful for that; and very happy about the opportunity, as those who know me will testify that I am a Tolkien obsessed nut. What can I say: the man was a genius and the greatest author that ever lived! Now I know it’s not everyone’s “cup of Ent-draught”, but Middle Earth, Elves, hobbits, dwarves, dragons and orcs are the reason why I fell in love with reading.

Back to the topic… The theme for this year’s competition is “Battles of the First Age” – so many to choose from, but the most impressive of these must have been the War of Wrath, even though there wasn’t as much written on this one as there was on some of the others. I chose to highlight the moment when the Eagles flew in to the rescue from the overwhelming force of Morgoth’s dragons. I would have loved to have also portrayed Eärendil as he slayed the great dragon Ancalagon, but such a scene would have been deserving of a far greater scale than my A4 sketch pad and much more time than what I had at my disposal. Well I hope my work is good enough as it is. I would love to win, but far more than that I would love my sketch to catch the eye of the prestigious John Howe, famous Tolkien/Middle-Earth artist, amoung other things (who will be one of the judges of the competition). I’m a huge fan of his work (like many people) so it would really mean a lot to me if he saw something good in my sketch. Here’s hoping…

This is a painting that I did during the December holidays for my sister-in-law. She wanted something to remind her of home (she no longer lives in SA)… I thought about this one for awhile and decided that something like Table Mountain would be way too clichéd; so then I thought of going for something like a pincushion protea. However, while searching for reference material I came across this beautiful photo of a sunbird (that my mom had kept from a calendar – gotta love my mom, she keeps everything); I figured there’s some protea-like plants in the pic so it would do nicely… and I like sunbirds

 It took a couple of weeks if I remember correctly. I first did a basic sketch on the canvas with my beloved 2B pencil; well kind of basic: I have a tendency to go into too much detail with my preliminary sketches – and then cringe when I paint over most of it with the first layer of paint. I used my trusty oil paints thinned with a bit of turps here and there in the background. Speaking of the background – it went through quite an evolutionary process, starting out as a post impressionist looking mass of leaf like blotches. It really wasn’t working because it looked too flat and didn’t allow the bird to stand out enough; so I employed my artistic lisence and went with a radial gradient (which, if you use your imagination, could be the sun’s light filtering through a lot of foliage); this makes the bird stand out more and actually draws the eye to it.

 Please feel free to comment…

Just a short entry today… This is a painting that I did for my mom-in-law (affectionately known as Mommy#2) for her birthday, which was actually just over a month ago – wow it’s taken me that long to add it to my blog – hehe. Moving along…

I painted this from a photograph (one of those free stock photos that comes with Corel X3), since I didn’t have any real roses and I’m not good enough to paint it “out of my head” – yet. I liked the colour and composition and wanted to do something that would go with Mommy#2’s lounge. Thankfully she liked it, so I’m going to do two more to go with it (mostly because it’s much too small on its own); not sure if I’m going to stick to roses or go for other flowers of a similar colour – we’ll see.