I only just heard today, Evel Knievel died over the weekend. What a tragedy.

I have to admit though, my first memory of him wasn’t watching him leap over double decker buses or through loops of fire on his trusty Harley. To me the name brings back memories of the gyro-powered toy stunt bike. I spent most of the 70s winding up that handle and sending his bike off the kitchen table, down the stairs and over countless ramps. The real life Evel may have suffered more broken bones than any other man who lived to tell the tale but the action figure doll on my bike came off much worse.

Is this excessive? A machine of this size to produce a 30ml shot of espresso? Of course not. But then, I did just buy a Gaggia espresso machine last weekend. I’ve got so much caffeine running through my veins at the moment nothing seems too excessive so long as the espresso keeps flowing.

How time flies. I’ve recently been working on some ideas for a children’s picture book. That, along with other stuff has just prevented me from posting on here for a while. I’m going to try and make amends by posting an image every day in December.

Damn. I failed already. I only thought of this idea at 11.15pm. Oh well, I only just missed posting on December 1st by a few minutes. All in all it took just over an hour to do the sketch, paint it in photoshop and post it up here. The post entry may say December 2nd but the majority of the work was done on the 1st.

This is an illustration I did last year for a thread running on the Association of Illustrators site. I remember I had just downloaded ArtRage and wanted to test it out. I liked the idea of playing around with the scale of things. I just never figured out if it was a small elephant with a normal sized stamp or a giant stamp with a normal sized elephant.

I did the sketch for Illustration Friday’s hat theme but didn’t get round to doing the finished artwork because of other things I’ve been working on. I still managed to find time to do a quick painted version of Slash but I think it works better having him playing guitar for the two morris men.

>> rollover image <<
Trick or Treat
Illustration Friday time again. I missed last weeks because I was away on holiday. To make up for it I have two illustrations this week, a before and after.

Happy Halloween.

…just send your money and we’ll turn you into a hunk.

Illustration Friday - Extremes

My interest in comics has been revitalised by a recent series about British comics on BBC4. Here’s my homage, not to the comics but to the corny ads that you used to find inside.

Illustration Friday - Open

How do you know if a woman is pregnant? She will be eating pickles… with everything! Chocolate, ice cream, custard, even burgers. Such culinary combinations can’t be good for their offspring so food manufacturers pack them in jars that they can’t open.

I don’t think these guys have the compulsary hair length for rock legend status. Oh well, they look young enough to grow into the roll. Created for SFG ‘rock legend’ theme.

If you had wings would you just sit on a cloud playing a harp? I would want to loop the loop, scare unsuspecting birds and while I’m at it I would check out the bar Sinatra sang about in far Bombay that sells the exotic booze. Is that aloud?