Thursday, December 27, 2012

Gold Coast typography

A small collection of 'classic' typography on buildings of the Gold Coast. I don't know what qualifies as vintage or heritage listed but it seems to have lasted for decades and doesn't look like disappearing anytime soon.





Saturday, December 22, 2012

Travel sketches

Ahhh Kyneton - where every house has a rose bush or three. During a recent trip to Kyneton in Victoria I took the opportunity to sketch some of the beautiful buildings around the town. These big old bluestone structures really caught my attention. My accommodation was formerly the old butter factory which is shown in the bottom image of the two landscape sketches. Another highlight of my trip to Kyneton was a visit to the Rundell & Rundell chairmakers. They turn out beautiful hand carved furniture and spent some time explaining to me the materials and process involved in creating each one. It was an inspiring encounter with someone who believes strongly in the skill and quality that comes from hand craftsmanship and respect for the materials that are used. They don't just make chairs for todays owner, they make them for generations. I have included a link to the Rundell & Rundell blog in my links section.



Friday, December 14, 2012

Kallquist Guitars illustrations

It all started with a conversation with Brisbane luthier Luke Kallquist about his beautifully crafted 'GUN' electric guitar and his love of Spaghetti Western movies.  I thought it might be interesting to try and capture his guitar in the style of an old Western Movie Poster.

As displayed in an earlier post, I really love the old style illustrated movie posters and this project gave me a crack at trying to create one of my own. The combination of guitars, movie posters and painting let me indulge in my personal interests resulting in a project which I honestly loved doing from initial pencil sketch (which I have attached below) through to picking up the final printed piece.

One consideration was to limit or avoid doing digital retouching to the painted artwork and keep it as authentic as possible. After scanning, the only photoshop work done was in adding the smaller character boxes, positioning the GUN heading and positioning the outside border line. These were elements which I illustrated separately and then had to combine for the layout.

The initial aim was to produce a poster with the painted image but along the way the idea of doing a T-shirt screen print was born and a more graphic, one colour, Saul Bass inspired version of the illustration was created. By the end we produced A2 size posters, postcards and T-shirts.

You can check out the handiwork of Kallquist Guitars at www.kallquistguitars.com



Tuesday, November 20, 2012

He's on the way part 2 - Getting closer.

Tex here is nervous.
You see, he has heard the word. And the word is that there's this guy around town.
Rumour has it that he's some sort of master who likes to craft his own piece. 
That's right. Made special for that little extra 'performance'.
He's a contender.
He let's his work do the talking.
And he's coming soon.
Real soon.


Friday, November 2, 2012

He's on the way.

Over the last few months, this guy has gradually been edging closer to the light of day. 
It won't be too much longer now. 
Stay tuned.