Storm's a-brewin'

Sketchcrawl 42

Sketched on a Samsung Galaxy Note 8 And a process GIF. Trendy.

Rafael Nadal

Sketchy at the mo..

Show me the Money!

The infamous line from 1996 classic Jerry Maguire. Coloured from rough lineart...may do a background later

Ellen Degeneres

Supreme Court Tower and Dome, late afternoon

Initial painting with iPad Brushes. Finished with Corel Painter. Wanted a loose, soupy feel.

Hyde Park Deer Sculpture

Loved the greeny porcelain look with a light glossy spray wafting from the fountain behind it.

Sketchcrawl 38

A Japanese garden lantern done at my folks place. What I love about extremely wet days is how dark and blue plants get - they almost glow. It was also a good experiment in low key painting. Done with Holbien watercolours, scanned and fixed in Corel Painter. So do hashtags and mentions work on this thing now +UrbanSketchers ? #sketchcrawl

Happy Holidays!

Merry Christmas, Happy 2013 and all of that. Catch y'all again next year!

Worldwide Sketchcrawl 35 - Sydney

Last weekend was my first Sketchcrawl in Sydney and there were 30 artists, young and old, whipping out their pencils and drawing. Having done Sketchcrawl's in Melbourne for so long, I was inspired (and secretly jealous) how large the community was here - to see how eager they were to sketch the world around them.

The group went to Cockatoo Island, a relaxing 15 minute ferry ride from Sydney. It was a beautiful and alien looking place. Old machines, warehouses and buildings over looking the Sydney skyline. The one above is yet another iPad sketch. I was barely on Cockatoo Island when the scene just grabbed me. It was an overcast morning and a little damp, this seemed to saturate the colours on the cliff faces. Yet right next to it was a giant, man made warehouse which was coloured a fading sky blue. Rarely in the modern world, I think, would this exist anymore, nature would just get mowed down. But here they seemed to co-exist, frozen in time.

The sketches below are from a more traditional media known as "pen". They are shot on a more prehistoric thing called a Nokia phone camera. Unfortunately I don't have all my equipment here so for now, this'll do.

Please do yourself a favour and check out the brilliant work of the other Sydney sketchers. And while your at it, the rest of the world!

Sydney Town Hall - iPad Plein air

This was done on the iPad again on the Brushes App in front of Sydney Town Hall. I was lucky enough to get it on a gorgeous day.

Sydney isn't a bad place at all. Great weather, beautiful landmarks lots of inspirational places to sit and draw. Here I sat inside the Kinokuniya book store opposite Town Hall painting for about 2 hours. The security guard was sussing me out every 15 minutes trying to figure out what I was doing. Although it's on iPad advertising now, I guess painting is not what normal people do when they visit a bookstore. Looking forward in seeing what else Sydney has in store.

Video here:

David Beckham, OMG

When one of your boyhood heroes rocks into town, there's really no stopping the childish giddiness associated with it. Late last year, David Beckham came into Melbourne in what would be described, a lacklustre game with crowd engagement at an all time zero. That didn't stop me however, from printing a portrait I did of him and holding it up in the crowd like someone would care.

Specifically for digital painting I wanted this roughness and bite to it that's rare in printing. After talking with the printers for awhile we settled on a paper called 'Breathing colour - velvet'. And although in photo form it doesn't show up very well, in reality the texture of the paper really lifts the stroke work. So I would recommend giving it a go. It may not be the cheapest thing to do, but it's certainly rewarding having something tangible to hold.

And for reference, here is Becks at the game. If I could just say, everyone writes him off being a superstar and only caring about his image - but on the field, my eyes fixated on him - I thought he had brilliant presence and sense that he actually cared about the team. Not to mention that he still has those skills.

Nadeshiko Japan - Women's World Champions 2011

This is Homare Sawa and Nahomi Kawasumi of the Nadeshiko Japan soccer team who are the current FIFA Women's World Champions. I also thought that they had my pick of goal of 2011. This gigantic, split-second lob:



Art wise, this was done fully in Painter, again trying to use new brushes. In this case an edited Oily Bristle. I tried to mix it up by not only caricaturing their faces, but shadow patterns and designs to try to make it appealing. It was a fun study and process.

The Karate Kid Painting Montage

Going through my hard drives made me stumble on some old WIP files of my Karate Kid painting I did awhile back. What a joy it was too.

Although I still watch the movie on a religious basis, artistically it was the European Masters exhibition held at the NGV last year that really made me want to stick with this painting - it was a study.

It was a real privilege to see such works at that exhibition - but what amazed me was the artists' richness, variety and control in their darks - things you'd never notice on crumby scanned or photographed images on the internet. Works like this one by Edgar Degas were one of many inspirations for the Karate Kid painting that I should credit in the video above.

Hope you enjoy it anyway!

The Legend of Zelda 25th Anniversary

Don't know what's making me so incredibly nostalgic these days. Or somehow all these marketing 'anniversarys' coincide with my demographic. Curse them.

Anyway, this piece was done for CGHub's 2D Jam of Zelda's anniversary. The Dark World in 'Link to the Past' was the thing that jumped into my brain. Probably because I spent so long there running around not realising it actually had some relationship to the Light World. I'm reminiscing here and probably not making sense to anybody out there.

I tried to change up my workflow for this one. Colour palette was derived from a Richard Schmid painting that had a similar mood to what I wanted. I 'mosaiced' the image in Photoshop and mixed from there. It's NOT a Nori original idea - I read it somewhere in a magazine and thought I'd give it a shot. It's nice if you need to paint a feeling out there and remain gestural. The rest is drawing, really. However, now that I look at it, you can lose something using that technique and I probably wouldn't use it if I were going for a finished painting?

The other thing I tried to do was stay with a singular hard edge brush in Painter and work from large to small. That way I concentrated on the graphic shapes and how they worked in the overall composition. Bit of a puzzle, and still a challenge.

And here is the theme that sent shivers down my spine when I began working on this.

Megaman Tribute, Preview

A small snippet of my Megaman painting for Udon's Megaman Tribute book. Whether or not I actually get into the book is up to Udon, but we find out come end of February.

Fingers crossed.

Happy Holidays from Down Under

I watch the news and I'm not sure if the 'white Christmas' thing is all its cracked up to be. It looks... cold, damn cold. I even feel it through my television.

On the other side of the equator in Australia it's, well, unseasonably cold as well...but hey, you could put on a singlet and survive, for now at least.

Anyhow, while Santa is gearing up and getting ready for his trek around, I would like to wish you, your family, your loved ones, your cats, your dogs or whatever you have, a very merry Christmas and a safe, happy and healthy 2011.

I tried to fit as much as I could in one sentence because I meant it.

Here's to a great year ahead! Cheers.

Nori

The Karate Kid

There was the Karate Kid of 2010, but nothing, repeat, nothing compares to the trilogy of the 1980s. The movie still sits proudly in my DVD collection as one of my all-time most inspirational movies that defined my childhood. This, ofcourse, is the hilarious Fly catching scene (that was somewhat replicated in this year's film) with Miyagi's tagline "Man who catch fly with chopstick accomplish anything".

So I thought, hey, if that movie had such an impact on my life, why not use it as the theme to the upcoming Drawtism exhibition to raise awareness of those affected by Autism Spectrum Disorder. Watching it now, almost 30 years after its original release, it dealt with the mixing of middle class America with different cultures, classes and values. Yet despite all the social constraints there was some commonality that allowed all characters (not just Miyagi and Daniel) to succeed. Loosely, this is what I felt the challenge of having autism was - the overcoming of the barriers of communication and expressing thoughts, ideas and actions freely.

Then again, if over analysing something wasn't so annoying, the Karate Kid just remains to be a legendary film.

This piece as well as many others will be auctioned off for the charity in November and will be on display at the Melbourne Treasury Building from this Friday!

Good old Collingwood for-eeeeeever

Sports stars are fun to caricature, particularly ones that have been bashed around in the AFL. This is Collingwood Magpies coach Mick Malthouse with his assistant Nathan Buckley who incidentally won the 2010 Aussie Rules final.

Again I used Painter for this one and just thrashed it out quite honestly with a palette knife. AFL is like that, a bit rough and tumble.

Congratualtions Collingwood for season 2010!

Her Majesty, the Queen

Nothing says "you vile commoner" than a snotty nosed portrait of the Queen of England. I did this for the Facebook group Caricaturama 3000 where there's a pile of talented caricaturists submitting.

I started this sketch off with the iPad out of anything then finished it off with Painter. I used the Charcoal Variants as well as a slightly modified 'Loaded Palette knife' which is awesome. It sorta creates the unexpected randomness you get when you paint in real life?

I also recorded it on both my computer and my iPad, so hope to share it soon :)

Come along to the 'Digital Dreams' Exhibition. (My works are in there)

Trendy Melburnites! Come down to the Brunswick Street Art Gallery and check out some of Australia's talented digital artists display their works. This group exhibition has been kindly supported by Adobe! I'll be displaying my paintings and 3D stuff there too.

The show runs for 2 weeks, starts tonight all the way to the 9th of September. So if your into looking at some cool art by some even cooler people, make your way here!