Bands through the Hourglass.

Hey there, guys and girls.
Apologies for starting a blog and failing to post anything new up in months and months. In my defence, I did say that I'd only come here when boredom strikes, and BAM, it has struck. For an hour or so, so here goes.

Hey Jiggles, what's been jiggling? You may well ask. Well, I've been jiggling, let me tell you. It's Jiggles Central. since I wrapped up the first season of Deadly for Zuda Comics, I've been drawing a whole bunch of stuff. What was really nice, was the clients that seemed to wait patiently while I drew a comic for a year. Then they all struck at once, and I've been strapped to the desk ever since, pretty much.

As fun as drawing a comic is, I must say that it's been great to stretch my artistic legs and draw a whole bunch of different stuff. The main difference being that when you design something in a comic, you have to keep in mind that you'll be drawing that thing from a thousand different angles, a thousand times. With a poster, or an album cover, you can go to town with all kinds of crazy shit, and not worry about having to draw it a whole bunch of times.

I thought I'd start off with some of the band art I've been doing lately, along with links to those bands.

Troy Loakes, lead singer of the Huckleberry Swedes.
I've been working with the Swedes guys for nearly a decade, and this is my latest for them, more so for Troy.  These guys are great, Troys' voice is golden, well look at the quote on it, they say it better. If you like a bit of country, a bit of dusty melodic twang, check them out! Here are some other Huckleberry Swedes illustrations I've done over the years:

Their latest album, Suburban Dreaming. Mark and Troy had a great idea for this, the image of the painted Wheelie Bin on a suburban street. I earned my fee by suggesting that the butterflies fly off of the bins and into the night. The back cover is my old backyard. I went past it the other day and the whole place was gone, and a new house was in it's place, so it's nice to have a little arty reminder of that shithole where I lived for 9 months... The front cover was used for a billboard campaign around Adelaide, so it was nice to see them really big around town. Note the sound effect coming out of my arse.

But I think my favorite illustration for the Swedes has to be this, their gig poster. Troy gave me the instruction to make it like a gritty Western movie. And boy do I love a gritty western. Here it is:

I was really happy with how it turned out. I even hid Huckleberries, Swedes (the turnip), and a Swedish flag, to show how Aussie they are. I've got a big block mounted version in my house.

Well, that should do it for the Swedes, check out their website, or go see a gig sometime!

The next band is a group of young cats called The Belle-Phonics.  No real instruction from these guys, they allowed me to go a little crazy (which I love). I haven't met the band, but I'm sure they're all lovely... Here it is

After that came a job for James Annesley, a Jazz Master from Melbourne. I really enjoy working for James, he allows me to go a special kind of crazy with his jobs. I would call it darkly humorous. This is for his latest album, Vicious Cycle. If I had sex with my cat, this is what the baby would look like:

Here's his previous album, Idle Hands Do the Devils' Work. He sent me a little blue diagram of a red brain inside a head for inspiration, and here's what I came up with:

Here's the first job I did for him, and he sent me a really awesome simple cover sketch, in the style of the image on the television. It was really fun to turn his crazy elephant footed bird and 2-legged snake-giraffe thing into realistic looking characters. I wish I could find the sketch to post up with it, but I'm lazy...

Then came a job that had been brewing for a while, Blue King Brown. Carlo from the band had contacted me when I was in the thick of Deadly, and we threw many ideas around. The main one was their existing theme of the stripes, and speaker. Also, the lead singer Natalie has Native American roots, so we wanted something totemic to suggest that. I suggested a Wedge-Tailed Eagle, to tie it back to Australia. Can't wait to see this out and about. I drew all the images seperatley, so they can be used for all kinds of things...

And that's about it for now, I've been working on a few new comics as well, and I'll tell you all about them in my next blog, which hopefully will be sooner rather than later.

Rock out with your frock or cock out...or both, I'm not fussy....

Love Foz

xo