The crew at Blankwalls recently held a group show at their newly opened Blankwalls Studio in Perth.
Blankwalls has built an enviable reputation across the globe as world class stable of street/mural talent, so I was happy to be included in an impressive lineup of artists from all over the globe to showcase some of my work.
I managed to get 5 pieces into this show , they were; Dawn, Outer orbit, Explore feel, Inner Landscapes and The new machine.
Well, this was unexpected!
This year I really wanted to get back into exhibiting some work and had a few pieces in progress, two in particular that stood out as possible entries in the Rockingham Art Prize.
As the entry deadline approached the smaller piece was picked up by a collector so I had no choice but to push a larger piece ‘The New Machine’ to completion.
After putting the final touches on this one it was photographed and submitted. I waited knowing that this show attracted a large amount of submissions. They in fact received over 460 submissions and I was lucky enough to be amongst around 60 artists selected for exhibition. I was extremely happy to be selected.
Seeing my work in a local gallery was fantastic and the opening night and awards were an even bigger highlight for this year.
This 1 x 1 meter artwork is a statement about where we are going as our digital world slowly surrounds us and eventually we become a part of it an it becomes part of us. The central human has taken on a new face the human has become the new machine.
The final Photobomb event at the Corner Gallery in Subiaco was a massive one and a great big step out of my comfort zone as an artist. Featuring artists; Dave the Robot, Luvieur, Robert Jenkins, Shlives, Ian Mutch, Steve Browne and of course myself DoodlesinTransit!
Each artist was given a Photograph from one of the following photographers; Alex Kidd, Mike Daisy, Chris Gurney, Sam Bloor and Blair Gauld. Then during appx 3hrs each artist could add there creativity on top whilst gallery guests bid on each piece.
I managed to select a great photo from Blair Gauld of a cyclist carrying a US flag whilst riding along Santa Monica Beach. I wanted to really exaggerate the Americana vibes here, what iconography could I use to represent The United States ? Hmmm how about one of the biggest exports for the US…MacDonalds!
Usually when I paint I don’t have an audience, and some live bands playing or a 3hr time limit so this was a real test for me but it was an awesome experience that I’m really grateful for, on top of that I got to paint alongside some other Perth artists that I really admire.
Big thankyou to Alex from the Corner Gallery for the experience and the highest bidder on the night Donna (pictured below) part proceeds from this piece went to my charity of choice Beyond Blue.
I had the pleasure of exhibiting in a rare 2020 group exhibition held at the Corner Gallery just after WA Covid restrictions were relaxed. It was a chance to introduce my work to Perth in a small way after not exhibiting in my home city for so long.
The bonus was exhibiting alongside some of Perth’s established and emerging artists.
I exhibited three original pieces.
All three pieces were sold during the exhibition. You can see them on my Original Art page.
Massive thankyou to my new collectors that picked up one of these pieces and also to Alex and The Corner gallery.
I’m an absolute beginner when it comes to large scale artwork, but for a while now I’ve been wanting to take my work to a wall somewhere. Taking an idea that started in your head, sketching it then scaling it up to a large wall mural is a real test of an artists abilities and a great way to push yourself out of your comfort zone. Luckily for me the good people at The Corner Gallery had just the right wall for me facing busy Hay street in Subiaco.
My first step was to figure out what I was going to paint. I decided pretty early on that my Musician artwork would be ideal, I just felt it would be perfect for the almost square area I had to work on.
Scaling up was the next challenge, there are 3 ways to do this
1. Old school grid
2. Projection tracing
3. Scribble method (check out a vid by Rhone )
Each method has it’s merits but at this size 2.6 x 2.6m I selected the old school grid system and based everything on 30x30cm grid squares. To speed up the grid drawing I cut out a 30x30cm sheet of thick card and used this as a template for marking. Below I’ve added my reference image that I used with grid overlay.
Next step was getting my colors and gear ready
It was time to draw my grid and get painting, Day one I got my grid up, linework done and all the main blocked in colours. Day 2 I was crossing my fingers I could complete all the fine details but I fell short by perhaps an hour or two. I came back later to clean up some mistakes and stencil in my mark.
All up this was an awesome opportunity and I’m now hungry for the next wall, I did make some mistakes and would maybe do one or two things slightly differently and maybe a bit more practice on the cans would be good but I’m happy with the final wall.
There are little parts of every city that get forgotten, a broken window, a lifeless grey wall. They are the dark corners and run-down alleyways that beg for new life or a splash of colour.
There’s a building I pass by often, a slightly awkward building perched on a busy road in West Leederville that has this damaged, rusty vent. Metal slats are missing leaving a big dark space (it actually opens up into the building basement) I’ve been weirdly obsessed by it.
It’s that dark void I’m interested in, at first I thought it looked like the building had one closed and one open eye. Wouldn’t it look cool to paint that? But then I thought it might be possible to create some art that occupies that dark void, perhaps I could use that negative space to tell the story of that aged wall. It clearly needed one of my tormentor characters.
Say hello to Frank, I wanted Frank to be chomping down on that busted metal frame like he was standing in the basement holding onto the frame and watching the cars zipping past. I’m pretty satisfied by the result.
UPDATE: Frank managed to win a Creative Project award from one of Perth’s Mayor candidates. I’m too lazy to dig up the details but you can take my work for it 🙂
When national juice bar franchise, Boost announced a competition to redesign their cup designs, I thought I’ll give that a crack.
With a large national footprint and a Boost Juicebar in pretty much every major shopping mall in Australia, the opportunity to get a Doodles in Transit design into the hands of every juice lover in Australia was a no brainer.
I wanted to create an in your face explosion of colour that was all about fruit but was unmistakable as a Doodles in Transit original.
The process started with some simple hand sketched elements and then I inked in the black line work which would later form the basis for a digital illustration.
Once on the computer I created my colour palettes using image references and digitally colored using Adobe Illustrator. This gave me the final illustration which is then dropped into the cup template which forms the cylindrically wrapped cup art.
After getting all the artwork files together I thought it would be nice to get a visualization of what the final cup might look like so I used Adobe Dimension to quickly create a cup and map the artwork onto its surface. 3D is not my forte but this app keeps it very simple.
Boost announces the selected winners (3) at the end of April so I’m crossing my fingers they want to take a chance on my concept. Whatever the outcome I’m happy with my attempt and think it actually works really well in its final cylindrical form.
I’m always interested in the man made systems around us that influence our behaviors, often without us even realizing and often sending us down into a time burning rabbit hole.
Click Machine is all about that in the context of the web or social media. Today it seems to be built purely to make us all sad clicking zombies searching for the next hit.
This artwork is a once off original and available here
Hand drawn and digitally coloured
Burgerland is an illustration all about excess, fast food and that ‘super-sized’ mentality. I wanted to make my colour palette over the top and really mirror that retail attention grabbing facade that we see play out in advertising and packaging.
DoodlesinTransit 