Beer O'clock

It's a sunny Friday afternoon. Surely it must be close to Beer O'Clock.
It reminded me of this little acrylic painting on plywood that I did for my Father as his Father's Day card. (I had written on the back of it.)
Cheers, and have a good weekend.

Sketches at the Guitar Repairers.

A couple of months ago, the kind and talented folks at the Guitar Repairers kindly allowed me to sit in their workshop and do some sketch work. I'm certainly no expert on guitar makes and models but I love the look of them. This workshop has some lovingly restored beauties in all sorts of styles and shapes. Hoping to do some more sketch work in there again soon.

Coffee cravings

In the words of Lisa Mitchell - "Coffee, Coffee, you're my heroine..."
Here are a few pieces created in honour of my favourite brew.

Simple paper sculpture

I have never attempted to do one of these before but when I first started out in an illustration studio, I recall my boss having pages of beautiful and intricate paper sculptures in their folio. Times and styles have changed over the years and I don't see much of it at all these days. But I still love the effect that you get out of hand cutting, layering and lighting the paper. Unexpected things happen, and for me that's where the interest and beauty lies in paper sculpture. This piece is simple in terms of the layering but one day I might attempt something a bit more complex.

Postcard paintings

These are a couple of paintings that I have recently done onto plywood panels. With these I was really interested in simple graphics. Nothing fussy, just pure and simple silhouette. They were taken from a series of sketches based around kids at play.

Putting it out there.

All sorts of sketches, thoughts and ideas - some good, many of them bad go into my sketchbook. Most never progress past that point and a few might get finished off to finally get displayed around the house. But now I have decided to throw some of them up here in my first foray into the blogosphere.


My intent with the grubbyrubber blog is show anything that I've been exploring in my sketchbook or on the drawing table. It might be something that I have sketched while waiting for a train or something that has tweaked my curiosity on the TV. There might also be other things that I have found inspirational. All of the images displayed are under copyright of the artist credited to it.


I don't know where this caper is heading or what the results will be. But I guess I'll find out along the way. Cheers, the grubbyrubber.