Quick updates from Norway

So it has accidently been far too long without any updates. In the past few weeks I have been away on a quick holiday to LA, NY, London, am now in Oslo and have Berlin and Bangkok ahead of me. I was in NY when the Oslo attacks happened and left London the day before rioting broke out, it's been really bizarre, but thankfully the people I know in both places are safe.

I can not wait to get home and begin working a lot harder on my art and career as an illustrator, I have seen some amazing shit in museums and galleries and stuff like the grand canyon and viking ruins. Hooley Dooley.

Now just some quick updates which I will remember to go into later... I won the Appleton's competition so a huge thank you to all who took the time to vote and send it on to encourage others to vote, it's fucking incredible I am going to Jamaica in October and I have just now seen the first mug out of the kiln to approve the stain/glazing etc... IT'S SO AWESOME. I hope there are enough to go around, because I want like 10.

I almost managed to finish my organ series before fying off but not quite, so when I get home I will be working hard to push them through, and want to start on another bunch of exhibitions I have always wanted to do. I have also decided to separate drawing from painting to experiment more with paint and be able to keep my illustration style and develop that further.

Here is a photo of me enjoying Field Day Festival in London last week.

Voting Begins!

I don't want to have to type the same shit twice, so if you are unsure about what this Appleton Estate Tiki Mug Competition is, read the previous post on this blog and it will explain EVERYTHING (i hope).

Anyway, voting for this tiki mug competition started at some point on Monday, while I was attending a dear friend's birthday BBQ at a local park, and then I woke up early on Tuesday with little recollection of the previous night's events and saw that voting had started, and that it was ok for me to be sharing this image now. I am really pleased with what Tom Laura AKA Big Toe came up with because he actually did use as reference some of the illustrations i sent him about Seamus Morgan. I'm totally stoked.

I have been doing everything in my power to get people to vote my way, so i thought i'd plug it here, and see if anyone actually reads this (unlikely as i'm shithouse at updating.. this may change). so if you haven't already, head on over to the Appleton Estate Rum- Australia facebook page, like it, click 'vote now!' on the navigation bar on the left, and vote for seamus morgan, mu mug! (it's this one below)

Things are looking positive at the moment, with a whole host of people telling me they've voted and i don't know them.. so word is getting around which is great! Thanks everyone who takes the time! I now have TWO families in Jamaica I will be having dinner with! AWESOME.

Send me to Jamaica!!!!!!

I recently became a finalist in this competition on Facebook to win a trip to Jamaica! Appleton Estate Rum has been putting out custom tiki mugs to send to bars and this year Australian bartenders were given the opportunity to help design the next mug. Out of a butt-load of entries my concept was chosen with two others to be drawn up by some of Tiki-Farm's finest mug designers, and they go up for voting from the 4th to 17th of April. The winner gets involved in taking the mug through the design process and through to completion, plus a trip to Jamaica to the Appleton Estate and to meet the Master Distiller!!! WTF AWESOME.

Now.. I have several reasons why I NEED to win this. Ever since I was a little boy, I've been obsessed with the caribbean and tropical islands, and the first pictures I ever drew were of such islands. They had waterfalls, volcanoes, cannibal villages, tree-houses, quicksand, shipwrecks and I drew them all the time. ALL. THE. TIME. Still to this day I love cheesy tropical stuff, and being a bartender at Hula Bula Bar (Perth's only tiki bar) has only reignited my need to go to the caribbean. It's also introduced a fondness for rum, and I have been drinking this whenever I can, which is a pretty boss Jamaican overproof rum called Wray & Nephew. It'll put hairs on the hairs of the hairs of those that are on your chest.

This for me is a perfect marriage of career paths. I want to be an artist, and I love my job behind the bar because of what sort of bar it is, a tiki bar. I would absolutely love the opportunity to work closely with some of these amazing artists and delve into the seedy heart of this tiki culture and all associated scenes and their art, and see what I can do. If I could end up working for Tiki-Farm due to this, or find someone interested in helping my game become a reality then fuck yeah!

ANOTHER THING! My board-game! Is so heavily influenced by tiki culture, pirates, the carribean, rum, i totally need to go see the place! And the connections I could make and communication with these artists could give me some really good ideas about how to manufacture the boxes, pieces, and give the whole thing a really authentic and quality feel! Who knows, perhaps It might even get some Appleton's stamp of approval!

My mug design is pretty much taken from the game too! Seamus Morgan, the fearsome Voodoo Ghost Pirate is my "rum-god", who is pictured in the right side of the banner on this blog, so check him out, and imagine him much more rotten and tiki, in mug form so you can drink out of his hat. Dope.

In order to help me out, head on over to the Appleton Estate Rum - Australia page on facebook and like it, then when voting starts give your vote to me please. And if you feel like telling your friends to do it too, that'd be killer.

JAMAICA!

Penny Quill/ Holdfast Tattoo Mural

So I had the great honour of working with a street artist from Melbourne. He is fucking bonkers. Sicks 1 and I were invited to begin working on the walls inside Penny Quill Hair Salon in Mount Lawley, which is actually inside Holdfast Tattoo. So arriving one night after a few beers with whatever paint I had left over and jangling nerves we began. The others finished their pieces pretty quickly, but I opted to use paint pens instead of lining with can because I suck at it at the moment.. out of practice, never been that good to begin with (note to self, set up boards in the garage already).

Anyway after a few weeks and sessions lining up what I started with no plan, I have reached a safety point. I can plan the extensions and typography and other bits of shit i'm adding and then keep going. I think it will look pretty dope when it's done.

The garbage on the jaw I just doodled when I didn't like the skull detail, so I am going to paint over most of it and re-do it. But i sort of like the power lines with mini shoes hanging off them with rooftops and palms.. could be a good idea for backdrop or future murals.

Comin up, Peach Long Selling Party

I have decided to finish off a bunch of paintings I started for the JERK exhibition last July and never finished in time. I want to see where they end up, to see if I hit the mark I expect to because I planned these to be tight, aesthetically-pleasing-when-hanging-on-a-wall paintings. It is a series of 9 on 30x30cm pine, painted in acrylic and lined with ink (which is proving to once again be a waste of time and money but still so crisp). After this series I'm deviating and experimenting with different methods of construction and heading hopefully towards a more free and painterly method, still hoping to achieve the same level of detail and intensity.

They're all basically parts of my body being lazy and mistreating themselves. This is an eye, mostly lined up but still unfinished. Also in the series is a tooth, a heart, lungs, liver & gall bladder, a hand, a stomach, a tongue and a penis (playing a gameboy, drinkin a longie from a brown paper bag, smokin a cigarette from under his mustache).

I am hoping to hold a selling party when these are done to raise funds for travel, as I should be heading to LA and beyond soon, and might also possibly be heading to Jamaica this year, (more on that later). So if anyone is interested in seeing and buying any once they're finished, please get in touch.

Relative #4 Launch

RELATIVE Magazine is a pretty fly little local mag that features local artists, music, food & drink, film, fashion, tattoo, everything. It's run by a bunch of wicked dudes and is top notch quality and totally free! I got asked to do the cover for #4 and provide a few pages worth of images and a tiny bit of text.. The cover image I just made a banner out of for this blog, so scroll up and check it out in more detail (minus the 'siren country' of course).

The mag features some work I haven't posted about on here yet (I don't think), like this collaboration with Pari Corbitt.. one talented son of a bitch who does amazing paintings and tattoos. Pari did a giant dead fish, and I did the junk coming out of it's mouth, and we put it forward for Windows On Williams when they had their window display thing.

The mag was launched down in Fremantle and I did some live art with Twenty Eleven (mine on the left, his on the right). It was an awesome night, I got free beer all night and tried to paint.

If you live in Perth, grab yourself a copy of the mag if they're still available! From the usual places like Luna, trendy hipster cloth stores and record shops etc. Or visit the Relative Magazine webpage or facebook page for more info.

Injured Ninja Vs Skylazer & GTMJ finished

I hate updating this blog, I always manage to screw with the formatting and it won't let me upload anything after spending a good hour or so finding images and writing about shit. So only small updates now.

Injured Ninja have been reeeeaaaal busy, playing gigs all over the place and have launched their debut album as well as a single from it, which I have previously posted about.. here is the new artwork, experimenting with layering with transparent materials (just ended up being annoying.. i won't be doing that again).

The album Vs. Skylazer pictured below, had a massive launch in sweltering heat at one of Perth's finest venues The Bakery, and I took the night off to go and got my mind blown by the sweet line up form start to finish. The launch and the album itself both received amazing reviews from multiple sources and the boys are touring this album in the United States right now, I think they've just finished at SXSW (South by South-West), which is a HUGE festival in Texas. After the states they're coming back home via the East Coast of Australia.

I don't think this last one will help, but it's meant to be bigger that the others to display some of the work that went into it.. detail and shit. screw this blog.

Coming up soon: more posts! I have exciting news.

Beat Up Decks

I got my hands on a phone that can take decent enough photos every now and then and that's a bit of an improvement from what I was using before, so I thought I'd upload the series of portraits I did on second hand decks of myself and some other dudes I know with facial injuries. These were for a show in July this year.. I did them really quickly, I think I want to add more to the blank parts of the decks still, just an emblem/symbol/item at the bottom of each deck about where the trucks would be.

From left to right with name and what happened is Casey with a cigarette burn to his lower lip, myself after i got my good friend Eddie to punch me in the eye for this project (thank you Ed, you did good), Marijn after a skating incident and Mikey after being hit in the face with a wet pool noodle during a fight. These are sort of shitty portraits, they don't look anything like the people do in real life. Realism ain't my forte.

In other news I've been working hard at the bar I work at, the Hula Bula Bar, which has been getting some recent write-ups in papers/mags etc and our menu is shifting to incorporate some fucking awesome cocktails, like the 1934 Donn the Beachcomber Zombie. I've also been listening to the latest cut of Injured Ninja's up-coming album, "vs. skylazer" which is epic, and the artwork for that is turning out to be alright so far.. sort of Hokusai on steroids.

Also I got this today trying to buy a lamp and got distracted. It was cheap, I'll buy a real one eventually.

Tiki carving, dismemberment, DIY... I feel like i can do anything now.

PS.so many opportunities for linkage, but it's late, and I cannae be arsed.

GOLDEN TOP MOUNTAIN JOURNEY

Injured Ninja are releasing a 7" single of one of the tracks from their upcoming album (which is fucking dope by the way, coming out next year, and is going to make you wet yourself in awe). The track is 'Golden Top Mountain Journey', a bizarre dubby mix of sound.. comforting and disturbing at the same time. I banged out a quick CD cover to accompany it to music magazines and radio stations to amp up hype about it's release, and it is a preview of sorts for the actual 7" Single cover which will be available for your purchase in the coming months.

It's also experimentation for the album artwork for when that is released, which will be epic, and bloody, and dirty.

KARAOKE SATAN MUSEUM-Part One

I have been busy lately, working weekends and trying to get art done on the few days between. At the moment I'm deep in the middle of an installation project about youth's relationship with satan/religion and it's re-appropriation in pop-culture and blah blah blah.. Over the course of a week 8 artists are coming together in the Mixtape Gallery space on William St, Northbridge, to create a Karaoke Satan Museum.. it's part installation, part exhibition, part skill-sharing workshop with a mentor artist flown over from Indonesia, Ican, who has a blog here.

It's been a few days of painting on the walls, listening to really loud metal/rock, and having people come in and out dropping off art and adding to the window displays. Pictures when I get them, I still don't have a camera or been bothered to borrow one for the decks I want to post here.

Friday at 3pm and saturday at 2pm things are happening at the KARAOKE SATAN MUSEUM that are worth dropping past for.

Art blog with no fucking art on it. FAIL.

Developments

The show at The Moon was well received, although I did not finish most of the work. In order to complete the series of 4 tiny boards (see previous post) I expanded it to 7, including the larger "test-piece" and got them to about 80% finished... then sold one, which means the series is short 1 part.. I'll finish the rest and screw the last one.

The organ series, which was going to be a big part of it, got painted up but I opted to finish the skate decks instead and leave the organs without lines etc.. so I still have those to finish for some upcoming shows with Last Chance Studios (moved in to this collaborative studio space last week), and have the finished decks here with me. I am pretty happy with the decks.

The other artists did very well indeed, and I was pretty stoked to be involved in a show with them. They are extremely talented bastards. Jenness Ray & THNK, I thank you.

I am temporarily incapable of taking even crappy phone photos to upload, so please be patient until I find a way to get images up. In the meantime, keep up to date with Last Chance & The Community for exciting art news.

That last part sounded really naff.

PS. too arsed to link to things.

JERK

The group exhibition coming up at The Moon Cafe is in a few days. I'm in my room surrounded by paint in coffee jar lids, with paintings all over my bed and desk, 4 decks on one easel, a shitload of dvds scattered beneath the tv and nothing is finished yet. I think it'll be ok.. I like to work under pressure and this is some pretty bitchin' pressure.

The amount of pieces I hope to get done for the show.. 9 in my organ series 30x30cm each, 4 15x15 pieces I didn't have a plan for but are turning out ok at this stage and 4 skate decks of beat-up faces. The faces are all drawn on, ink-washed and waiting to be painted but I don't know how to paint them yet.. I need thicker paint because some of the seal still remains on the decks even after sanding. Oh well.

The view from where I paint pretty much looks like this.. except the easel is pretty useless with pieces this small, it is just a good place to hold test-wood to make sure the colours I mix are gonna be ok.. and they usually aren't because I don't paint often enough. Because of this I think I'm going to lightly sand off the paint on the organ series before lining them up. I don't know if this will look good or bad.

This is the test wood I was using to test colours, the back of it anyway and then ran out of space and started to use the front. Some friends offered to help me out with deadlines and do some of the paintings for me, so I said I'd pencil one up of their design and they could finish it off for me. They suggested (because the show is titled "JERK") that they draw a guy jerkin it, and spunking knives. Turns out it looks pretty rad at the moment in a funny way, so I'm keeping it instead and finishing it for the show.

Hope I get it all done, The show is at the Moon Cafe this Sunday from about 6pm onwards, all are welcome.

Face Wasting & Zombie-babes on bikes.

So in the lead up to the group exhibition coming up June 13th at the Moon Cafe, I've gathered some photos from the past few weeks capturing exhibition preparation and photo shoots for illustration reference. The shots were taken by one of the rad dudes going on a skate deck for the exhibition, Casey, and here are some highlights.

The face-wasting first attempt failed, I didn't get hit hard enough which was my own fault.. I didn't know how hard would be hard enough. Second attempt (not pictured) was quicker and I think we nailed it on the first hit. See my previous post for why I got myself punched in the face.

These photos were mucking around on a Sunday arvo trying to get reference material for a logo I'm doing for a friend's business which restores and sells awesome old bikes and shit like that. It is going to be sort of gnarley, with zombies and babes and graveyard type imagery all through it. I can't wait. It turns out we got a bunch of photos I want to turn in to paintings from that day... excited.

On another note I'm having trouble getting in contact with the woman who got my image tattooed on her. I found a phone number but have had no reply as yet. I'll hunt it down, Perth is small *evil laugh*.

EXHIBITION AND ON AND ON AND ON

I'm still slack as your grandma's undies for updates, but rest assured this year is choc-full of delicious plong-morsels for y'all.

Good news first up: the exhibition I'm now involved in this July at The Moon Cafe with THNK and the talented Jenness Ray has been moved to a June 13th opening, which is a Sunday. The Moon has long been a favourite spot for student types who can score cheap wine and decent sized meals late at night when most places in dullsville have gone to bed. The show should feature all of our work, quite coincidentally a lot of which is on skate decks....

My beat-up deck series showcases the faces of some of my good friends after being mashed up, including talented Dutch designer Marijn Degenaar, local badass and photographer/artist alias Chris Walken and Mikey of soon to be Tombstone Recycles, makers and purveyors of sweet second-hand lowriders and other pushbikes. The last deck needs another facial injury and I am kindly putting my own eye forward to get blacked to complete the series (first attempt failed, will have to have another crack at it but there are some ripper photos which I'll post when I get a hold of them).

Running late for updates I was going to include so I'll do them later.

Pete

Oh. Just got a text from my tattooist friend (The amazing Lozza) who said she saw someone getting my Riding With Wolves piece, "Liberian Girl" tattooed on her thigh. Whoever you are, I hope you know what you're doing, and I'm incredibly flattered:D

oh wait, what's this? there's something here?!?

I have not updated in a very long time, my apologies but I have just been hammering away finishing uni and doing boring stuff that is not really fit for this blog. My uni project needs to be kept hush hush (off the internet at least) until it's ready to go, but it's a prototype board-game to be released hopefully in the next year. I won't say much but it is pirate themed and pretty epic.

I have been doing a fair amount of live art, and when I gather some decent photos of them all I will post them here, but you may have caught me at Beck's Music Box when Breakestra played Feb 6th and Calexico the 26th of Feb. I painted with Richard Healy (awesome painter, I will find his blog and link it soon) on both of those occassions and also at the Relative Apparel launch at Ezra Pound recently, and we scored a commission out of our collaborative piece at Calexico. I also painted at the Rosemount at the Jamboree for Jocelyn a few Sundays ago.

I moved house recently, now in Mount Lawley where all the cool indie kids are, and am setting my studio up in a corner of my bedroom, and hope to get VERY productive VERY soon. I have an idea for an exhibition I could bang out pretty easily with affordable pieces, just as a stepping stone to a more intense, ambitious debut exhibition later in the year. I figure unless I build up more work my career will die... pfft.

Anyway, there's stuff on the horizon for Injured Ninja coming up too, so don't give up on me yet, I'm only just getting started bitches.

IDDQD & ARTILLERY AD SHOOT

Just a quick update this time.. Uni is getting really intense as it should do in the final stretches of a three year degree, and I've also been swept up in a few other projects which have come to pass recently.

Amnesty International fund a youth/arts event called

the ARTillery Festival or something, and the advertisement was shot the other weekend. Basically the film team shot a white wall with "artillery" written on it in time-lapse with artists painting around and over it while dancers etc pranced around in front of us. Also involved in painting were Daek, Sean Morris, THNK, Tor, Knest, You Like Planes and a few others.

You Like Planes, Daek, Sean Morris and myself.

You Like planes, Sean Morris and Daek working.

The other half of the wall features Tor, THNK, Knest and some others I don't know.

This was my amnesty heart.

Injured Ninja and I are in a symbiotic art/music relationship. I am going to give them the best fucking art for their music and they are going to play the best fucking sounds and we'll both help each other to create the brand and take over the world. This is a preview of the Injured Ninja/Genghis split 12" vinyl cover art (the I.N. side of course). There are a few things I don't like about it, like stylistic mistakes due to rushing and the clumsy colouring that I did with copic markers that don't have a command-Z function... But I think it'll look great once it's printed. The single by Injured Ninja, "IDDQD" is badass, and the film-clip is going to be epic, so keep an eye out for it.

In other news, if you haven't already gone down to Kurb Gallery on William st to see Territory 12: 2 by Martin Wills then get the fuck down there like right now, because it's the best exhibition I've seen in ages. I bought a painting, how's that.

Days 3 & 4 of Three Bears Mural.

I missed out on updating yesterday but I still took some shots during Saturday's stint at mural painting.... I meant to get down there early and stay all day until maybe midnight and see if I could just smash the shit out of the mural. Instead it took me ages to get moving, re-stock the spray paint I needed and get there. Then I left early to get hammered. The beer in the eye of the squid is for scale.

Sunday was much better, I worked from 3pm until almost 2am and did pretty much everything I wanted to but was foiled by my good paintpen running out. I also fucked up some of the snake scales and did not add tiny random details yet like scratches, oozing fluids, tattoos, wrinkles, warts/spots etc.. I needed fresh eyes for that so I came home. I am totally happy with the anchor I busted out without so much as an idea of what to do.. it just worked out at the last minute.

The owners came in to add a coat of paint to the other half of the store and they took some photos of me busting my hump and lining that mothersucker up. They also got me a bottle of wine. I totally won with this job. One last thing I want to add: The Von Bondies album 'Pawn Shoppe Heart' is fucking great. Oh and I made a shitty sign for Vine Street house but I am totally going to make a better one, and now that I think about it, I am going to do a big god damn mural for next years Aussie day party, and probably do one during the day as well.. maybe a joint piece with some of Perth's finest... hmm.. can't wait. I fucking love spray paint.

Fucking love it.

Three Bears: Day Two

So I worked for another couple of hours today but had to can it early due to having cravings for an angus burger (I hadn't eaten yet) and work at 6. I managed to make a big damn mess by Mr.Sheen-ing off the pencil that was there instead of just trying to erase it, but decided it didn't really matter and got a few layers of colour down. The most exciting part of day two was seeing tonal range in my fills for the first time in my mural experience... it was hard to do on the floor with the nozzles clogging up and all that crap but it was worth the effort. I also ran out of paint for some parts and decided to bus home in time to eat before bussing back into town for work.

Still to do are the rest of the banners, the rope, the underbelly of the snake (green thing) with shading on the dark bits... cut back all the mess I guess.. do the teeth and eyes, then do all the line-work with paintpen.

fuck yeah i love spray paint.

Typhoons & Three Bears

I apologise for the lack of updates lately, things have been hectic with uni with not a lot of the work I'm doing appropriate for the blog... but I can finally upload the artwork from the Typhoons amazing new album, of which the launch was held several weekends ago. It was a great night and the Typhoons played an awesome set.

I have begun a mural commission in Wembley at the Three Bears store, which is still under construction and will be some sort of high-end, urban/coastal-wear store..... today was day number one and I laid out the design in thin paintpen after a while of dicking around with a pencil and an eraser which has halved in size since this morning. For scale, note the dustpan and bucket in the distance.

The mural should take until Monday hopefully, and in the evenings when I'm not doing that I should be working on the new Injured Ninja vinyl cover named "IDDQD". I've done the pencil work but it's looking a bit tame, hopefully the inking will make it insane and gross and shit. It has loads of guts and dead bodies hahaha... ooooh yeah.

PS. I don't have time to hyperlink anything. If this annoys you then you can piss off, nerd.

Injured Ninja Progress Report

Local fucking badass noise/rock/legends-in-the-making band INJURED NINJA are the only band I am doing artwork for now. Exclusive and shit. I have known half the band for a really long time and seen them grow into something with righteous potential. Also, they'll let me draw really outrageous shit if I want to and they'll print it (if anyone remembers the content of the last thing I did for them, you'll know what I'm talking about).

Currently in the works is a 12" vinyl cover for their new single "IDDQD" and today I made them a new logo. I don't often use illustrator, but I have to say I really enjoyed making this.

In other news I have been commissioned to do a mural for a surf store opening in Wembley, a few square meters on the concrete floor near the stores entrance. That is happening next week so hopefully I can get some photos of the making of for that. It is going to be tough doing something that big on the floor... i will need a ladder or something to check it doesn't get skewed.