Test Box

I have an old counter-top that I intend to turn into a document box for Annette. I didn't know exactly what timber it is, or how it would be to work, so I made this little box — it's only 140 mm square — as a test piece.

I had thought, when I first looked at it, that the piece of wood was a single slab, but as I got rid of the horrible dark varnish and smoothed it, it became apparent that it's been laminated out of a multitude of small pieces. That's OK, though a bit of a disappointment.

The project showed me a few things: first, that I'm way out of practice with my dovetails, and second, that I should have allowed more for the saw kerf where I split the lid from the body of the box. Also that my Ryobi table saw is pretty shit, but then I already knew that.

I'm not much closer to determining what the timber is. It's quite fibrous, and tends to saw rather ragged. I think the most likely candidate is sapele.

Impromptu Road Trip — Wanaka

Since Annette is on holiday at the moment, we decided to drop everything and head off on an overnighter to Wanaka. It's about a 450 km drive from Christchurch, so not an extreme day's driving, but significant.

We hadn't booked anything, so we went into the first waterfront motel we saw with a vacancy sign showing. The view from our balcony was this:

Click to embloaten

It cost about average for a motel studio room, but it was a bit nicer than average, so that was nice.

One thing though: it had a great big mirror facing one right where one gets out of the bath, which makes it very difficult to maintain one's carefully nurtured illusions. Alas.

We had dinner (and quite a few drinks) at the Speights Alehouse, for two reasons:

1. It was really close, and
2. The motelier gave us a voucher for 10% off food and drinks there.

The food was... let's call it inoffensive and unexciting. Call me a snob, but I do believe a red curry should at least have some chilli waved in its general direction before sending it out to be eaten.

Anyway, it was all OK, if not a taste sensation, and it was pretty cheap. We were pretty knackered, so we went back to the motel fairly early and went to bed.

The view from our balcony the next morning was this:

Click to embloaten... you know the drill.

Then we had a nice breakfast at a nearby café, and then started off home.

Just an aside: pretty much everyone we mentioned it to found it quite incomprehensible that anyone would drive all the way from Christchurch to Wanaka in one day, which I found a bit odd. They were even more surprised to find out we were only planning to stay one night, and were going to drive all the way back to Christchurch again in only one day. Huh.

Anyway, just outside Wanaka is a truly amazing place: The Transport & Toy Museum. It really has to be experienced to be believed, there's all kinds of stuff just kind of shoved in together like a gigantic cabinet of curiosities. There are many, many, MANY model aeroplanes. There are many, many cars and motor-bikes and mobility-scooters and vacuum cleaners and old cash registers. There is a full-size replica of a Renault FT-17 made out of plywood. There is a fibreglass Gloster Meteor. There are shelves full of creepy dolls. There's a Morris Minor covered in teddy-bear fur. There are cabinets overflowing with Smurfs and Star Wars toys. And so, so much more.

There's sort of an organisation to the place, but not a lot, and unfortunately a lot of the stuff is showing signs of neglect and decay. Apparently the guy who collected all this stuff — just one guy — died very recently, and I wouldn't lay too much money on the museum being around for very much longer unless something miraculous occurs. So, go and see it while it's still there to be seen.

I don't know that I'd call the experience educational, but I did find myself often making a slack-jawed what-the-fuck face a lot, which I rate as a plus. Whatever the experience is, it's definitely an experience.

Overall, I'd rate Wanaka as better than either Queenstown or Tekapo. It feels friendlier and like less of a tourist-mincer than Queenstown, and classier and less transient than Tekapo.

Upcycling

Some time ago, we bought a couple of cheap shitty $12 Warehouse folding chairs when we were on a road-trip and realised we had nothing to sit on while drinking our wine and slapping at sandflies. They were functional enough, but nothing to write home about.

As it turned out, they're not made of the sort of materials that appreciate being left outside in all weathers, and the MDF that provided their main structural sitting-resistance has become soft, spongy, and unreliable as a sturdy sit-upon. So, I decided to do something about it, and slapped on a new seat and back-rest made from macrocarpa.

From this....

To this.

It's not best-quality macrocarpa, but it's not too bad. Knots aren't entirely avoidable, but I managed to keep them away from any edges.

Scarfolk Council

How important are you?

Hatman

Playing with some textural ink brushes and what-not in Photoshop over a scan of some brown canson.

Bleary, fatigued

We had a power cut last night at ohforfuckssake o'clock, which I wouldn't even have noticed except that when the power goes out our alarm/smoke detector starts peeping annoyingly. Which it did. Until I got up out of the warm into the freezing fucking cold to make it stop. Which it did. Until I was juuuuust dropping off to sleep again. When it started again.

Repeat until ready to kill oneself.

Blueman

Fibre-tip pen and coloured pencil on very soft fluffy annoying hand-made paper.

About 130 x 165 mm.

Beowulf

Here's an illustration project from '05. It's about 280 x 380 mm.

It's supposed to be Beowulf hanging up the arm of Grendel in the hall Heorot, having ripped it off with his bare hands. That's pretty fucking hardcore, not to mention a bit gruesome. I guess it was a simpler time or something.

This was my first major effort at a completely digital illustration. I'd done a lot of digital stuff before, but up until this point it had always started with traditional media.

It's mostly Painter VIII, with some support work from CorelDraw and Photoshop. The files no longer exist; the disk they were stored on corrupted and they were unretrievable. So all that's left is a single laser print-out, of which this is a fairly poor scan — there's a lot of reflection screwing with the tonal values in places.

One of the perils of doing (what was then) large-format digital illustration on the weak and puny computer I had at the time is that I hardly ever saw the image as a whole, but only in disassociated tiny areas. That's mainly why Beowulf's proportions are so out of whack, with his tiny short legs and his busted-looking right knee.

It's much easier now; I have a machine powerful enough to be able to work fluidly with the whole image displayed. I haven't approached its performance limits yet; the largest pixel dimensions I've worked with is about 10,000 by 10,000 pixels (which, at 300dpi, would print an image nearly a metre square), and the largest file size has been about a gigabyte. Neither of those seemed to cause any slow-down issues — except that it did take a bit longer to save the images. Now I just want a couple more monitors. Maybe some of those nice 4k jobs that are starting to appear now.

Fracture

Here's a charcoal sketch I did back in '06 to fill in a bit of vacant time.

I scanned it mainly to try out Photoshop's Photomerge feature, which I have to say works pretty well. I wish I'd known about it sooner, it would have saved me a lot of effort.

Actually, now that I come to think of it, I did know about it, but ignored it because I could never get it to work in my old version of Photoshop.

Noznork

These are the double-page spreads for a children's book without words, an illustration project I did back in 2005 or '06. I haven't done anything with it since then. It's a simple story about the trials and tribulations of being a friendly but big and scary monster in a world filled with prejudice and fear.

Somewhere in Africa

These are a couple of drawings from photographs from Africa. Africa is a pretty big place, and I have no idea where, in all that space, either of these exist. or even if they exist anywhere near each other. I think not.

Sketchbook

This is the sort of doodling I do to occupy my hands and back-brain while I'm watching old TV shows.

Rahuul

TV-watching doodle. Ball-point pen, A5.

The Rot Has Truly Set In

The floor of my garage workshop has been a patchwork of the original floorboards and various bits and pieces covering up holes where the boards have rotted through. These patch-boards are (a) unsightly, and (b) not entirely safe, since they all stand proud of the floor level and thus create a tripping hazard. Not to mention that few of them are actually fixed in place. The floor has been this way ever since we moved into this house, twenty-five years ago.

I fear that this may be cause for some Occupational Health & Safety concerns.

I decided to do something about the holes in my immediate work area; although doing the whole floor at once would be nice, it's just not practical with all the stuff that needs to be kept out of the weather.

The existing boards have actually done pretty well, considering that they were laid on bearers (jarrah, I think — some sort of very dark red-brown wood) straight on to the clay almost a hundred years ago. There's only about 100 mm free space between the floorboards and the dirt.

I tore up the most accessible floorboards — the neighbouring boards are also pretty spongy, but they will have to wait for another day.

I discovered a little brick step that I didn't know existed. I guess it's a rudimentary moisture barrier or something, but I don't know for sure.

The exposed bearers seem solid enough when I whack them on top, but the bottom half, in contact with the soil, is basically just wood-pulp, so they will have to go.

I bought a 2440 x 1220 mm sheet of 18 mm strand-board to lay down as a new floor, but having gone this far I'm actually wondering about ripping up all the boards, a quarter of the shed at a time, and laying the floor in concrete.

I started laying some rows of bricks to replace the rotten bearers, and sort of kind of failed to stop.

It's not exactly very level, but it's firm and dry underfoot. It's also about 25-30 mm lower than the original floor level, which makes my work surfaces relatively that much higher.

I shall try it out for a while just as it is, and if it's not too obnoxious, that means I can use the strand-board elsewhere in there. There's plenty of floor that needs it; if anything, it gets worse the further back you go.

Stitched Demon

Photoshop.

For no particular reason, just killing a couple of hours.

Turkey-Timer Head

Technical pen and coloured pencil, approx. 148 x 210 mm.

Ruins

Quickie digital watercolour over a Faber-Castell brush-pen sketch. These pens lose their point and responsiveness very quickly, it seems to me. I haven't tried any other brands, so I don't know if it's common to all. Maybe it's just my ham-fistedness, smushing it into the page.

Floater Droid

Photoshop doodle. I started with a random scribble and this is what fell out the other end.

Mountain Kingdom - WIP

This is being painted over top of a photograph of a formation in the Dolomites, a bit distorted and with a new skyscape. I'm having some trouble with the perspectives though, especially in the king carved into the face of the centre spire; I think his head will pretty much have to be re-done completely.

A bit later...

I decided that rather than try to re-do the carving, I'd just try to disguise its defects. So now it's Under Construction. Plus, I added another bridge.

New Flag

While I'm all for taking the piss out of the whole new-flag electorate-distraction farce, it is actually a decent design exercise too.

This is an actual, serious, no-shit design that I think would work, and it's so jam-packed with symbolism that it squeaks when you rub it.

The cerulean blue field stands for our sea and sky. The green stripe is for our land, out on the ocean; the white stripe is for our Long White Cloud. The Southern Cross is pretty self-explanatory; it places us in our hemisphere, and it provides a visual link with the old flag.

Blort the Obscene

This guy was a very minor NPC in a game I was playing in during 1981 (my very first year of roleplaying games). It's a very crappy drawing, but I still hold it in nostalgic affection as one of my very first D&D drawings.

As usual, colour and texture added in Photoshop. The original drawing is HB pencil on bond typing paper.

Hornhead

0.5 mm fibre-tip pen line-work, textured in Photoshop.

Candleman

Rocks

This is another old line drawing, texturized. I was trying to be Möbius at the time, and failing miserably.

Brush-Head Guy

I drew this many, many years ago in an idle moment, and just now added some tone, texture and shadow in Photoshop. I don't remember now if I had any particular purpose in mind when I drew it.

Squeak

It's rather an awkward way to carry a spear,
but what can you expect?
It's only a mouse.

Wakizashi Bokken

I made this wakizashi bokken out of some scraps I had lying about. The blade is white oak, the handle is black walnut (I think). Total length is 612 mm.

Ironically, I'm no longer training at aikido due to having dodgy knees, hips and shoulders, so I'll most likely never actually get to use it for its intended purpose.

The handle has an oak tang running up the middle of it from the blade. The only reason I added the walnut wrapping was because the shape of the oak scrap tapered towards the handle-end, and didn't allow for a full-width grip. That made it a bit unsafe; it would be quite likely to fly out of a sweaty hand. The ovoid cylinder of the walnut handle gives a much firmer, safer grip, and I think it should probably be strong enough for a reasonable degree of thwacking.

NOTE: This was stolen from me from the dojo, along with the rest of my training weapons and weapon bag. My curse on the arsehole responsible.

Wooden Spoon

I made this spoon out of a scrap of oak I had lying around, while I was waiting for some glue to dry on another (less fun) job.

American White Oak, about 190 mm long.

I Do This Quite A Lot

TV-watching doodle.

Is that custard? Let's say that it's custard.

OK, that was coloured in Photoshop.
This one is coloured the old-fashioned way,
with coloured pencils.

Purple-Ink Weirdo

I drew this guy in purple ink many years ago, and coloured him up in Photoshop today because I had nothing better to do.

Gloomy Boy

Image area approximately 660 x 250 mm. Aquarelle crayon.

This is a sketch I did at 'tech back in 2006. It was just a quickie on a torn open and flattened brown paper bag, done to fill in half an hour or so when I had nothing else to do, and mainly to try out some aquarelle crayons I'd laid my hands on.

For some reason Annette really likes it, so we've mounted it in an old oak frame she got from a junk shop — it's nowhere near being square, but that doesn't really seem to matter very much.

Digital Collage

There's a little bit of painting in this image, but for the most part it's digital collage, overlaying elements from various photographic images to end up with this.

This particular scaly demon looks like he's just seen his phone bill or something.

Constrained... restricted.... confined....

Because my workshop is one metre too small, I am going to have to move my drill press outside. And that's not a job I can do single-handed, so I shall have to enlist the aid of someone moderately burly to help me get it out and then get it back in again when the job is done.

One. Fucking. Metre.

ONE!

RPG Module Illustration

This is an illustration I just did for an upcoming 1st or 2nd level AD&D module, written by Greg Daley and produced for Dragonsfoot, called Stele of the Silver Thane.

The big grey thing being molested by the little bald dude is the eponymous stele of the title. Dunno who blondy is really, but clearly some sort of emo humanoid. Maybe a half-elf druid or something. Or a barbarian mime. Something like that.

Tusky

Bird Head

I drew this. I have no excuse.