Beats Supreme
A synthesis of Graphic elements inspired by Photoshop and its possibilities, and partly inspired by the Abstract Expressionists and their cousins; Kline, Hartung, Motherwell and even Pollock. I had wanted to use this as the cover to my next Pin-Up Book – but I have been warned it is too racy.

Curves And Angles
This rather bemused , spectacular-looking girl is forced into a pose to complement a piece of art inspired by some sketches I made for a painting I never finished. It is inspired by Calder, Vasarely and Suprematism in general. This was used the the Second volume of FLIRT: THE ART OF NAUGHTY from SQP Publishing. Victor Vasarely is one of my all-time fave painters.

Brassy Psychedelic
Partly inspired by 1960’s Psychedelia and the psychedelic experience, Christian Dior glasses and the paintings of Mel Ramos. The pose was based on Evelyn Lory, a popular nude model. The piece of background art was originally designed as an E-Card for my brother for Christmas.

In Proportion
This is just a vaguely Surrealist piece. The girl was inspired by net model Erica Campbell. It reminded me of the Hitchcock movie Spellbound, and that in turn contained a delirium sequence that was inspired by Satvador Dali, who, along with John Waterhouse, is one of my favourite painters.

Because I can’t display the full art here, I have created a Downloadable DeskTop Montages featuring all four pieces.

All four pieces are now available from my online store at RedBubble.

ATB

M

CHILDREN’S BOOK ILLUSTRATIONS

These unpublished pieces, combining traditional pencil sketching with light digital colouring, were my first attempt at illustrating for a children’s storybook. I had done a little work earlier on a collection of short stories put together by my brother Adam, called THE LAND OF IDEAS – He still has copies available at moonarrow.com. I think these are quite good, but lack a sense of mood. I also think many of the pics were too scary for children – and I showed these to a primary school headmistress (who was a friend of the author) I met in a cafe and she didn’t seem too impressed, for, although she appreciated the quality, she didn’t feel they quite worked for the age group the story was aimed at. Some of the pics would even have been downright terrifying!

Oh well, you live and you learn, but I am still proud of them. I find tonal and colour work a lot more creatively satisfying than the line style I had to do for comic books. I have spent a lot of years honing my skills at tonal and full colour illustration, but I shy away from painting in oils or Aquarelles or gouache traditional colour techniques, because to produce the kind of detail I like takes too long and is often too messy and very often no longer cost-effective. I also found colour reproduction from scans and photographs very disappointing – so computer colouring rocks! However, I still prefer to do all the detail work in pencil, because apart from other advantages – I think it has a great look and feel, if you use it correctly and/or expressively.

LATE AUTUMN IN DULWICH – Part 1

With my eyesight getting a little better, I tried snapping some photos in the autumn light. Here are some of my favourites. Once again, because most Australian plants are not deciduous, the plant species in these photos are ones familiar to those of you who live in the Temperate areas of the Northern Hemisphere. The Australian sky, even at our Southerly latitudes, can still be very intense. The colour in these shots is straight out of the camera – no Levels, no Hue/Saturation, no Photoshop, except for resizing. The sort of aesthetic I was aiming for was in the leaf shots is partly an Orientalesque feeling, but with the Antipodean light.

Loca Bella

A new fashion boutique has opened in my suburb – in this shot, the owner is supervising as a signwriter, poised like a master painter of old, sits comfortably on a milk crate on the verandah roof. I felt so lucky to do this more journalistic-style shot – it just fell into my lap.

Dead Juvenile Starling

I think a huge fat tomcat had a hand in polishing off this avian. It seems frozen in wary observation, even in death. Two of my friends wondered why I would want to post such a picture – well – because I think it’s pretty good photo.

Stobie Poles Reflected in Car Bonnet

Stobie Poles were invented by James Cyril Stobie and patented in 1924, because timber is uncommon in South Australia. I have started to keep my eyes open for black cars for the opportunities they afford in their highly reflective surfaces. Using the space in a creative, and a well-composed way is harder than it may seem because of the need to carefully place the elements to prevent any element overwhelming the other.

Plane Tree Autumn Leaves

The intensified colour of the bright morning sun blazing through the muted copper leaves needs no colour enhancement, in fact this picture has not been tampered with in any way, it’s fresh out of the camera, just resized. The contrasting colours of cobalt blue with the golds and burnt oranges have a simple appeal, but the variations in form create a very aesthetic composition.

Roadside Stems

These stems have a simple dramatic geometrical vector just made for a photo snap – once again, the brilliant sky pops the shapes out at you as if you were wearing 3D glasses.

Apartment Block

There are lots of this style of apartments in my suburb – undramatic – largely uninteresting, but this just shouted to be shot – the compositional elements and angles were like a Jeffrey Smart or David Hockney painting. I am very, very surprised with how much I love this picture. I think the heavy sky has a lot to do with it.

White Flowers and Rain Cloud

During a break in the weather, I went around photographing in the muted light – the metal-grey of the cloud complemented the delicate high-end tones of the white flowers without them blowing out – very pleasing, but unsensational shot – but not all things in life have to be shouted. Some things just resonate sublimely.

ART GROUP TOUR
A few weeks ago, I was asked to entertain an Art Appreciation Group Tour of my Home/Studio. I had some trepidations, and almost passed up on the opportunity for several reasons – one was I didn’t know if I could accommodate very many people, and didn’t think my work would be of interest to such a group. But the occasion was an overwhelming success, and I was delighted by how well it went and how interesting and interested the group were. Many of the twenty-strong group, at the finish of the 2-hour exposition wound down over coffee and cakes up at GG’s Café in Dulwich – my favourite café.

MERMAID DREAMS
I am really stoked to be able to announce I now have a new piece of art available. I have such a soft spot for mermaids, and in this piece, I was attempting to draw something that had a serene quality. Dreaming Is one of Humanity’s greatest gifts, and greatest vices – of course, who knows what a mermaid dreams of? Floating weightless immersed in a lustrous gem-like blue-green – a Mermaid Insensate enshrouded In the mists of Morpheus. This Is a special new version never before seen.

So if you’re a lover of all things mermaids, I hope you’ll add Mermaid Dreams to your collection – available from RedBubble and CafePress in a wide range of formats; you can purchase T-Shirts, cards, mugs, fridge magnets and all manner of stuff…..
And on that note, the next piece is almost ready – so I should be able to make an announcement about that one in a couple of weeks.

THE LAST REALM
Just a quick mention of the Last Realm series – I am currently doing some extra art for TLR-BOOK 1: DRAGONSCARPE. Yes – strange and very true – that very same Book 1 (which is already crammed to bursting with art) is having a few more pieces drawn and coloured, for reasons I am not at liberty to mention here and now. But I’m thrilled to be able to do a few more pieces that I felt were missing from the first book – and show a bit more of the world that was missing …but much as I personally would love to depict more of the mundane Day-To-Day-InThe-Life stuff – well – this is action fantasy after all – so the new pieces will unfortunately be exciting and action-packed for the most part.

JAN SCHERPENHUIZEN PROJECT
And another exciting point of note – I’m in early talks with one of my past collaborators, Jan Scherpenhuizen, who helped out on LOST IN SPACE: VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SOUL and WOLVERINE: DOOMBRINGER. We are developing plans to work on some projects together

It’s very early days yet, we haven’t even settled on which project, but I am enthusiastic…

SHUTTERBUG TRIP TO STIRLING

So we snapped happily away for ages, eating as many of them as we could pick and stuff into our mouths – KIDDING! They’re toxic if not cooked properly, but they’re apparently a delicacy in some regions of Northern Italy

Wandering on, I experimented with my new Nikon L110 Coolpix, but shot the bulk of the shots with my Canon Powershot SX110 IS – which gives such a beautiful result – a snapper’s camera that punches above its weight quality wise. I can’t wait to move on to a proper Digital SLR – but I don’t feel I am anywhere near ready yet.

GOODBYE EVA REHOREK
Lastly, and sadly, I must announce the passing of the mother of my very good friend, Ivan. She is survived by her devoted husband, Karel, and her sons, Ivan and Daniel, and her daughter Susan, and her grandson Ambrose and his sister Madelena. My heart goes out to them and to Ivan’s wonderful wife and staunchest friend and ally, Caroline.

ATB

Michal.

First up on the Newsworthy:

I’ve added a new Devilia print to my RedBubble and CafePress shops,
available as a T-Shirt, Prints and a mousepad… soon to also be
released as a poster. Devilia is one of my favourite characters –
combining childhood nightmares with Playboy-like Pin-Up Pizzaz.
Devilia was a fabulously fun character to create, and I never get
tired of drawing her. I have produced many versions of her, but some
elements are unchanging – This version is close-to-classic, but the
horns are unridged.

This version of the picture “DEVILIA – MANIC” is more directly
appealing than the more disturbing original version, which at some
stage will see print again – I have a new version of that ready-to-go – hopefully I can find time to finish both the second GIRLS-FROM LINE
TO COLOR, and a book I have tentatively titled (but not finished
writing) called HYPERBOLIC. This work will be my finest work,
including many retouched pieces not published internationally, and
some new works.

I have also set up a profile on DeviantArt... and on myspace....
There seems to be an endless amount of these networking sites,
but I’m told it’s what you do in this era of the wired world, so
I’ve jumped in with boots on, so to speak.

This last week, I have also been working on art for Nat Karmichaels
publication of the classic Australian Adventure Strip AIR HAWK, by
one of my childhood art heroes: John Dixon, who established a strip
about the FLYING DOCTORS SERVICE and had a very modern, respectful
attitude towards Indigenous Australians, The Bush, Women, and a
grittily realistic and authentic feel reminiscent of the work of Alex
Raymond and John Prentice. Reading it now, it still feels authentic
and contemporary, with the exception of course of technical
innovations that occurred after the comic was published. I have been
helping with the presentation of the cover and Retooling of the main
logo. I will also be doing the art for the cover of issue 2, which by
the way I regard as a great honour, much the way I felt when I was
asked to do BATMAN.

The Adelaide Festival of Arts has played host to a monumentally
spectacular nighttime outdoor art event called the Northern Lights,
which features the transformation of Neo-Classical buildings along
North Terrace into psychedelic whimsical fantasies courtesy of huge
anamorphic projectors and some very imaginative photo-collages. This
was a personal dream fulfilled, because I had always wanted to see
our city transformed in this way. Here are a couple of my shots from
that event:

I am also starting sketches for a new piece to be included in Sal
Quartuccio’s (SQP Publishing) upcoming fantasy Pin-Up collection
called SPELLBOUND.

Lastly, here is a pencil sketch based on a character created by Matt
Cantley quite a while back, and I am including it here because I
absolutely have to …

ATB

M