Acrylic pant on orange cardboard - a bit larger than A3 but not quite A2. I have always found children's (and some adults) attraction to diggers, trucks and active building sites very charming. Their spellbound wonder transforms the stark realities of such noisy industrial wastelands into magical realms of fascinating action! This piece is a study towards a children's book on the subject.
Finished inks (dip pen and sable brush) on a 4 page short story due to be published in Wellington local comic anthology "Bristle" and will be released at
Armageddon at the end of this month over Labour day weekend (there is no webpage for 'Bristle' but this
google search has a selection of pages with info on the comic, how to order it and which retail stockists hold it).
This is an experimental piece, although I think it fair to say it is a self contained narrative. It's an experiment in evocation, to try and present the surreal world that appeared in my imagination, the area of dreamlike experience that is not completely defined and empiricle. It owes a lot to Noir Film tropes and to surrealism I should think.
This cobweby old bit is a parody of the treatment that North America's mainstream comic industry gave to it's only New Zealand themed superhero: The Tuatara. The character first appeared in 1977 in a comic called Super Friends, he became a member of a team called Global Guardians and his last appearance was in 1994 in a comic called Justice League Quarterly, where upon he was left in a coma.
While I had not followed any of The Tuatara's adventures at all, I had come across him in the late 1990's and decided a send up was in order. The page was something of a challenge to other NZ comics creators but apart from one response the idea faltered.
This was probably done with marker pen, perhaps some brush and ink too and then coloured in photoshop.
