A3 Show 2012 - Illustrators Australia

Top, Shaman Mask - Angry Red
Below, Shaman Mask - Antler


Illustrators Australia will be holding it's annual A3 Print Show in June this year and I'll be one of the exhibitors. (see image below for dates and times)


I'll be showing and selling the two images above as Glicee prints. They are professionally printed on Acid Free Canson Edition Etching paper, 310gsm and printed using the Epson 9900 series. 
(Limited to an edition of 40 signed prints). 
Image size 297 mm X 420 mm. Paper size 330 mm X 455 mm.
Prints signed, titled and editioned in pencil at bottom. The electronic signature seen on the above images will not be on these prints.
Contact me by email  if you are interested in obtaining one or more. 
The email address is at the top of this blog.


These artworks are based on my Shaman series skateboard designs (See them in the beestycard zazzle store). I was interested seeing if I could apply the rich ornate vertical design of the boards into a more standard print format proportion for this show. It took awhile to work out but I have finished the digital artwork this morning (with a break to sit outside to observe the transit of Venus). When the sun became obscured by clouds in the afternoon I had the first prints from the edition professionally printed by Angus Benham at his printery called Gusha Visual Media over in Brookvale NSW. Thanks to him for such great quality work.

Merry Christmas - 2011

Merry Christmas to all friends, clients and casual visitors to kenrinkel.blogspot.com. This is my christmas card that I am sending to clients, friends and family this year. it features Santa Claus as a happy man revelling in his time spent underneath the mistletoe. Internet surfers around the world may be familiar with Christmas and Santa Claus but maybe not so much mistletoe. 
Mistletoe is commonly used as a Christmas decoration, and according to custom, the mistletoe must not touch the ground between its cutting and its removal as the last of Christmas greens at the winter equinox; it may remain hanging through the year, often to preserve the house from lightning or fire, until it was replaced the following Christmas Eve. In cultures across pre-Christian Europe, mistletoe was seen as a representation of divine male essence. Whoohoo!
It was described in 1820 by American author Washington Irving in his "The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon": "The mistletoe is still hung up in farm-houses and kitchens at Christmas, and the young men have the privilege of kissing the girls under it, plucking each time a berry from the bush. When the berries are all plucked the privilege ceases."
I think these days it would be prudent to ask first.
Joyeux Noël 
Ken Rinkel

I'm Not Scared - IF

 

The first thing that came to mind when Illustration Friday's suggested topic word of 'Scary' was remembering all the dressing up and anticipation for the North American festival of Halloween. Which as an occasion is catching on in my Aussie neighbourhood more and more each year. 'The harvesting of the lollies' night is one candy companies, retailers and and (lets not forget the kids) are loving. A bag of free candy from the neighbours just for dressing up! Wow! Kids aren't stupid.

The second thing that came to mind was a book I illustrated in 2005 for Blake Education. The images here are just some from 'I'm Not Scared'. This was for their Gigglers series and was aimed at reluctant primary school readers. Above is a page where an Ogre appears and below is the printed spread where the Bunyip is appearing.













The story was about a father and daughter ghost talking about what they found most scary.
Each scary 'monster' mentioned manifested. Then, as each monster mentions what scares them it then manifested. And so on. It was a great little book written by author Wendy Blaxland and was great fun to create and play around with scary fun characters, including the father and daughter ghosts, an ogre, a giant and Australia's own billabong frightener the Bunyip.

The illustrations were created digitally from scans of the roughs and was the first book that I extensively used photoshop filters for texture. Below, is the cover image showing some of the character faces.

Pass It On

Jackie Hosking of the weekly e-zine Pass It On has included my 'Suds' children's illustration and short interview with me in the latest issue. (issue 355. Monday, September 12th 2011)
The suds illustration is from my children's book portfolio and pre snakeskin sketchbook which most of my recent posts have included. You'll need to go back a few months to see more of the children's book and educational work.

What is Pass It On?
Pass It On is a weekly, interactive, networking e-zine for all those involved with or interested in the children's writing & illustrating industry. (Australian focus)




Meanwhile here is a monkey eating an iceblock. It's a detail from a spread in my Monkey Match books.

http://jackiehoskingpio.wordpress.com/

Swept Up, Illustration Friday

'Swept Up' is from the Snakeskin Sketchbook series. This piece was stimulated by the Illustration Friday suggested topic "Swept'. This is a combination of crosshatch ink drawing and a digitally created background.

Print is available from Redbubble.com

Snakeskin sketchbook 5

I've been pursuing the Snakeskin Sketchbook series quite rampantly of late. It is evolving as it goes in the original sketches themselves. It is also evolving as the finished prints become more complex in their background textures.

I'm posting a number here that are showing the framed prints available on the Redbubble site.

Mount Annan Gardens - Mascot

This is a fun job that I got to do. I have always wanted to design a character that would be eventually transferred into a 3-dimensional walking talking living doll. This character is called 'Buttercup'. She's a character designed as a mascot for the Royal Botanic Gardens and their Mount Annan Gardens. The buttercup is a flower endemic to the garden area and the character was created to appear at the various events that the gardens put on at their south-western Sydney site at Mount Annan. The digital art was designed for brochure, promotion & newspaper.

Rutting Skull - Call of Duty Mousepad

This was a bit of fun with the 'Rutting Skull' image from the previous post.

I've modified the illustration to be a personalised Call of Duty mousepad for my son's birthday.

FONTS - Rabiohead from http://www.pizzadude.dk
and Cracked © 1993 House Industries 

Rutting Skull

This happy little skull is the mad cousin of a much more benign character I call Batzglass.
I'll post something about him in the next few months. 'Rutting Skull' comes from a little pencil scribble which appeared while I was working on the main Batzglass character concepts.
I recently started pulling some of these accidental nuggets from my sketchbooks to see if I can work them up into an interesting finished image in their own right.

TACHYON Gardens - characters in space flight - detail

TACHYON Gardens - characters in space flight - detail of the previous image with my signature overlayed for © protection

Ophelia II

An updated image of Ophelia which I opened my blog with. The typography is more integrated and there is a little more detail in the figure.

1st post - latest image

OPHELIA
Since this is the latest image I was having a play with, I thought it a good one to upload for the start of this blog. This image has been created as a completely digital image.  It has started life being built using Illustrator's vectors but then has been finishing using Photoshop.