JUNE 25

OUTPUT

Had a bizarre tattoo design request from a mate who’s Welsh and moved over to Australia. I give you the dragonroo, this thing is butt ugly haha.

I knocked up a fun little flyer for a 70th party for a trial riding enthusiast.

And here’s a few of the Cypher can designs I knocked out:

And in preparation for the Chaos Realm Vol II Festival I created a ye olde manuscript to invite other breweries to get involved:

INPUT

These are the best three movies I watched this month:

“Boots, boots, boots”. The use of that haunting poem in 28 Years Later sold me right from the trailer. This movie was fantastic, Young Fathers doing the soundtrack was an inspired choice especially with the shots of northern lights in the background of some behemoth getting obliterated with a flaming spear. It was part dystopian horror, part family drama and took a sharp turn away from the tired narrative of a father and son coming of age narrative.

The Royal Tenenbaums was a rewatch and I think I love this movie even more now, top spot for Wes Anderson movie used to be The Life Aquatic however I’m not sure now. “ I’ve had a rough year” shakes me up everytime, he makes such good sad aesthetically pleasing movies. He can chill out on killing dogs in each movie though.

Birdman is the superhero movie we deserve. This meta-commentary one-take performace meditates on when your self worth as a creative is tied to admiration and public accolades. “You're doing this because you're scared to death, like the rest of us, that you don't matter. And you know what? You're right. You don't. It's not important. You're not important. Get used to it”.

Click Image to listen to a track. This album never fails to get me amped up ready for what I know will be a difficult shift or to work through some anger. It’s got an intensity like Converge but then adds some more rhythmic and slam elements.

Click Image to listen to a track. I used to almost exclusively listen to metalcore but have been edging away from it over the years especially bands that use a mix with clean vocals . This album is like a warm hug with all the elements that I used to be drawn to and has a huge range.

Click image to listen to a track. What can I say, the man is a genius across all his musical endeavours. This album he’s linked up with Metropole Orkest a shit hot jazz/pop orchestra to create some huuuge jazz fusion tracks that have me feeling like I’m living in a mariokart level. Not all tracks are strong and there’s some really weird stuff on here, but very much worth a listen. You can also watch them all performed live with the orchestra.


MAY 25

OUTPUT

As I regress more and more into past forms of communication before the little black mirrors in our pockets I’ve put together a post card design that celebrates snail mail. You can order them in multiples of 5 from my store.

One of our friends runs an instrument repair workshop locally, this month I got them some more files so that they could do some advertising with. This is where I got my amazing tuba from.

And the piece that took up most of my time this month is a hyper colour monster that I’m pretty proud of. Cypher Brewing Co. has a beer festival in August based around the expanded concept of the Chaos Realm. This was based on a beer design I wrote about in my July 2024 blog post. I took inspiration from a few places, art from Hieronymus Bosch:

The circles of hell and ideas from the first part of Dante’s Divine Comedy, Dante’s Inferno:

And of course as should seem obvious to anybody who is a fan of the TV show Adventure Time, the art style I’m going for is the same. The brewery got a different bloke to animate sections of the artwork and it turned out pretty great. Here’s a couple of process pics and then the finished piece:

INPUT

These are the best three movies I watched this month:

Kneecap was special, it hit all the right notes: class warfare, colonisation, pursuing risky creativity rather than a safe wage. And the music is genuinely great. “ Every word of Irish spoken is a bullet fired for Irish freedom”. Preserving indigenous languages is an act of defiance against colonisers. Without your language you lose your culture. Ireland stands apart as a West European country that was historically a victim rather than a perpetrator of imperialism.

I finally got around to watching Gattaca after lots of recommends and enjoyed it. Its a cautionary dystopian snapshot of 90s sci-fi taking swings at the scientific headlines of the time. I like that the pacing was slow and a lot of the movie was setting up an ambience of dread and control. Pretty funny that the entire movie was white people, apparently racism isn’t a thing in the future because it’s all about the genes, and then the plot was that two white men couldn’t be told apart even with a photo.

I didn’t give lego batman the love it deserved when it came out. Now that I am older and wiser I would go as far as to say that this is the most accurate representation of batman throughout all of his iterations. It takes elements from silly 60’s batman, the 90’s trilogy, the comics, the cartoons, and Nolan’s trilogy. Here are some of the obscure characters this movie had the balls to include: Catman, Killer Moth, Clock King, Crazy Quilt, The Calculator, Gentleman Ghost, Mr. Polka Dot, The Condiment King etc. It hits the overarching theme of batman’s torment in all of his stories: family. And not just the loss of his parents but him building a messed up child soldier familial structure held together with the glue of trauma. Chefs kiss.

Click image to listen to a track. This is the first new vinyl I have bought myself rather than getting second hand pieces from op shops. I love this album, I think it’d be described as blackened deathcore with symphonic elements. I probably sound like a wanker but it does hit different when it’s physical media playing through a custom set up.

Click image to listen to a track. I’ve been having a rough time figuring out work life balance as I navigate new work environments. I always return to this album Wildlife by La Dispute. It’s an emotionally charged delivery of interwoven stories from different perspectives with each story having a loose theme of mental health and resilience. I think I like it so much because I see it as a meditation on empathy and also articulates the fear that creeps up regarding the strength of our own resolve.

Click image to listen to a track. This new one from viagra boys does a fantastic job of being superficially silly and groovy while touching on deeper themes. The track I’ve linked is an absolute earworm, catchy as hell, and is also an exploration of imposter syndrome. There’s a slower track ‘medicine for horses’ that’s got some nihilistic / self destructive themes while sounding depressing and downtrodden and somehow like Arcade Fire. It is such a nice contrast to the rest of the album.

I’ve only read one book this month. My god is was a wild one. Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. Here’s the blurb from Goodreads cos I really don’t know if it can be summarised in any meaningful way. The bastard is non-linear and has over a hundred pages of endnotes you have to keep flicking to cos a good portion of the story is hiding there. The first 900 pages are a bit of a slog but then it really doesn’t go anywhere, and that’s a good thing.

A gargantuan, mind-altering tragi-comedy about the Pursuit of Happiness in America.

Set in an addicts' halfway house and a tennis academy, and featuring the most endearingly screwed-up family to come along in recent fiction, Infinite Jest explores essential questions about what entertainment is and why it has come to so dominate our lives; about how our desire for entertainment affects our need to connect with other people; and about what the pleasures we choose say about who we are.

Equal parts philosophical quest and screwball comedy, Infinite Jest bends every rule of fiction without sacrificing for a moment its own entertainment value. It is an exuberant, uniquely American exploration of the passions that make us human—and one of those rare books that renew the idea of what a novel can do.

I think reading this has been very much worthwhile but this book also seems to be idolised for the wrong reasons sort of like Fight Club and the first Joker movie. My biggest criticism isn’t that it’s an unfulfilling ending and largely pointless (I quite like that); it’s that it’s obvious written by an insecure man. The limited female characters are 2D stereotypes, sexualised and objectified with very clear gendered power dynamics. I guess this could be seen as a choice by the author in depicting toxic masculinity in this fictional historical projection. However, there’s a distinct lack of exploring the patriarchy further while he bangs on about the evils of late stage capitalism, the two go hand in hand in my opinion.

APRIL 25

I’ll skip the input section this time and just leave you with an extended rationale for some pieces that are important to me.

OUTPUT

This month I finished a three year project, it was very satisfying. Throughout my nursing degree we were sent out on 6 placements and each of them were pretty wild, I did an artwork for each. This was pure self indulgence, something for me to alone look back on and appreciate. The idea is in part from the excellent HBO series “Oz” there’s a poet in the penitentiary who doesn’t write anything down, his performances are inspired from these multi-narrative drawings he does first. I love that idea. Here’s the art and some of the details crammed into each one:

THE OBSTACLE IS THE WAY

This was my first placement and a trial by fire. Uni changed my location at the last minute and there wasn’t even space for accommodation at the backpackers. I ended up paying just under $3k for 3 weeks in an airbnb underneath a family’s living space. It was hell, hardly slept while I was there cos there were rats in the walls, and the family threatened to cut off my internet as I was using too much while completing my pharmacology study and exam. At the end of my first week I came out at the end of a very long shift and found my motorbike in pieces in the car park. Some poor little old lady coming for dialysis absolutely destroyed it thinking she’d park in the motorbike parking. I wouldn’t be able to complete the placement without transport so I was in trouble. My partner drove two hours to come and rescue me from dealing with apathetic cops and insurance. We went out for pancakes the next morning and I opened up gumtree and found my dream car for sale 15mins away (20 year old corolla) and we went and bought it within the hour. This is on top of it being my introduction to what is fundamentally a broken system with nursing in NSW. I lost my entire savings for the the degree, about $30k ($3k accom + $17k bike + $10k car) and what felt like part of my sanity in the first week, but also realised I’m pretty capable.

APATHY AS A TOOL NOT A WEAPON

My next placement was a collection of my worst student clinical experiences. This was the local hospital so at least I could come home and cry in my own bed. I purposefully did this one in black and grey similarly to the rationale for why Picasso did Guernica in black and grey, as a sign of immediacy reporting on horrific times as well as digging into the truth behind the picture, no hiding in a colourful facade. In this one you can find a prominent skull, I had two patients die in messy situations that should have been better handled by the hospital. I got to take part in care after death and saw the part of the mortuary that the public shouldn’t ever see. There’s the cheeky old bloke with his bum poking out. I turned around one day and saw my patient with dementia stalking off into the forest, he’d successfully navigated a locked door and fire stairs while usually he couldn’t make it to the toilet. There’s pills, beeping infusion pumps, too many beds (10 for one nurse during a MET call) a syringe, covid masks, THE KEYS, scaffolding and construction work that means your one break is full of power tools. There’s the boom gates which forced student nurses (working for free) to pay for parking each day. And the cute little rabbit that would greet me after a long arvo shift walking back to the car. The worst part about this placement was the apathy management had towards the conditions of the ward nurses, and in turn the apathy those poor understaffed, overworked nurses were forced to employ towards the patients. Student nurses just do not fit into those broken situations.

DO YOUR TIME BEFORE IT DOES YOU

Off to prison next. I think I got the most out of this one, maybe not clinical skills but perspective and also nursing heroes to look up to. Personally I am very much against the prison system, it doesn’t help it just perpetuates a social gradient that punishes poor people. I liked this placement because in a public system the nurses are visitors to the facility and I can still hold that viewpoint and get to work helping some of the most vulnerable people. I didn’t know this but Australian prisons also have inmates produce commercial products that big brands profit from but don’t advertise this fact. This one made Fantastic Furniture products (see the chair in the art), others make products for Virgin Australia, and this is very much a form of modern slavery given the conditions and lack of pay. It means there’s an economic incentive for these people to remain incarcerated. This was a wild time in the region as there were raging bushfires close by that were choking the sky with smoke, charcoal leaves were raining down into the prison yards and barbed wire coils ( see the yellow hazed clouds in the art). At one point the power failed and the backup generators wouldn’t engage so all the nurses had to retreat to a safe room and wait for a couple of hours until power came back. At the time there was a trial for the dry blood spot program (see the syringes and blood drops) which was a rapid way of detecting hep C and lining up treatment. Apparently 80% of all hep C in Australia originates from sharing needles or fluids in prison. My favourite nurse was so patient, understanding, compassionate towards the inmates but also stood her ground against the prison security being unnecessarily cruel. She’s in the artwork dolling out the daily methadone, she has 6 eyes in this to keep a close watch on who is diverting their meds. Other elements that can be seen in this artwork are the rows of screens keeping eyes on everything, the textured concrete and sharp angles everywhere, the mechanical locks (lucky this was the case when the power failed) and finally the pills. The way the medication was done here was that every inmate with meds just had everything popped out into a little snaplock baggie given to them usually daily with no oversight at the time as to whether they’d taken them, and it was all a paper based system. There was one doctor in particular that only one nurse could interpret/translate what their scratchings meant.

THE REALITY OF AN IMPOSSIBLE CHOICE

Another location away from home, but this time I secured a caravan out on a property for $80 a week, best accommodation of the whole degree. The actual placement was in a close observation unit and I got to see how different breathing apparatus worked and some pretty complex comorbidities, but it wasn’t always busy. So I opted to spend as much time as I could on the local needle and syringe program, I think it was about now that I was pretty certain I wanted to go down the mental health / drug and alcohol pathway in my future career. I went out to locations to do kit drops (see the syringes and spoons) in burnt out abandoned buildings that the ambulances wouldn’t come to without a police escort. The town has a pretty dark and complex history. While doing a pop up out reach stall for people people living rough me and another student fell in love with this beautiful Australian kelpie and were chatting to its owners for a couple of hours. While this was all happening a helicopter was circling the city centre, we didn’t know why until we saw the news afterwards. Turns out we were hanging out with two people involved in a highway shooting spree who were on the run, we recognised our favourite dog in the helicopter footage of the arrest. The title of this piece refers to what we later found out, their friend was taken by a psychotic break and was shooting at strangers while driving down the highway, they shot and killed their mate so that he couldn’t hurt anyone else.

TRUST THE PROCESS

My next placement was in the Emergency Department and Luckily I got to come back and stay in my favourite caravan again. This was a great placement and I learnt a lot but it was also the first placement where I was targeted by bullying which everyone was telling me is synonymous with nursing. A lot of the ED patients coming in were mental health patients or coming off drugs and alcohol and required a heavy security presence, no joke the security guards they put on regularly were identical twins. Imagine thinking you were over the worst of it and then suddenly you were legitimately seeing double. The thing I learnt about ED which turned me off it is that everyone is just a process, predominantly cardiac, abdominal blockage, infection, or substances. You don’t actually get to spend much time with patients as people, treat em and yeet em. Some hidden images in the art include my broken car door doubling as a crashing cardiac monitor; my caravan doubling as myocardial components; and a stingray as I got to treat someone who copped the barb on their foot. The treatment was just putting their foot in water as hot as they could stand; monitoring them; and making sure there was no barb left in there.

NOTHING REALLY MATTERS UNLESS YOU WANT IT TO

My last placement was my choice, across state lines and in a mental health acute facility. Also in black and grey due to how messed up the surrounding factors of the placement were. The placement itself was great, felt safe supported and learnt a lot in a field I’m interested in. For context by this time I was already working as an assistant in nursing in a local mental health facility that was much more acute and severely understaffed. Some of the elements in the art include the light rail that I caught to the hospital everyday, I loved the combo of walking and public transport, I got to look at the stars on the walk home and saved $14 a day on parking. There’s a film projector representing my treat to myself, at the end of each week I’d take myself to the local cinema and watch a new release horror movie, the laptop doubles as a cinema with seating. There’s a lady with binoculars, this is the infamous student coordinator, she made life difficult for everyone. She would stay late and post up near the train station and penalise anyone who was leaving before 9:30pm regardless whether you had been dismissed by your ward. She was unnecessarily confrontational, and had students in tears as she wielded her power and literally cancelled placements meaning another 6-12 months of uni. The big drama of this placement is represented by the abstract corded phone with the coins flowing from one end and the timepiece at the other. Centrelink had decided to cut off my Austudy payments right when I needed them most staying interstate at an airbnb for 6 weeks working for free. They were building a case against me (claimed they weren’t) and kept needing more and more information as the pdfs I was uploading through their systems kept losing info or having errors, their phone app was under maintenance etc. So I had to give up my one 20min break most days to fight with them on the phone about which date I had uploaded which document and to whom I had discussed the issues with previously. It was hell, and despite being reassured otherwise, I was rewarded for my efforts with a $13k fine. That’s small change to some but for a student who’s already broke about to go into one of the most underpaid professions it’s hard to see how you’d be able to recover. But also I am a ghost driving a meat-covered skeleton made of stardust, riding a rock, hurtling through space. Nothing really matters.

MARCH 25

So I dropped my phone in the ocean and have lost like 10,000 photos. And now I’ve come to terms with it, I’m realising it’s not such a bad thing. I’m hardly ever, if at all, going to look back through all of that. Also the best pics I took I messaged to people any way and can get them back.

For a while now I’ve been using a $30 phone from Woolies that can do phone calls and barely message but nothing else. It does mean that I’ve lost a lot of pictures of artwork, especially the process shots, and I’ve lost the ability to easily see when I did them on a timeline. So here goes my best bet:

OUTPUT

That tuba painting I did last month I liked the idea of it but wasn’t happy with the execution. I had another go and turned it into more of a self portrait:

I really like adding little bits of collage into my abstract works. I stole this from the synthetic cubism movement where they termed this practice papier collé. It takes the artwork one step further from realism flattening the image plane and giving some variety to the patterns and textures in the piece.

Then decided I should do my partner as well as we met through music and are still playing in an orchestra together on the lowest and highest pitched instruments:

I splurged and bought myself some super chunky graphite blocks from UK (couldn’t find any local). I’ve been watching Tim Biskup make these beautiful pieces with graphite that always seem so unique and done within a flow state. I don’t think any of mine hold a candle to what he’s doing but they were really fun to do. I’m getting abstract modernist vibes maybe biomorphism:

Then while packing away I found this Buffalo Sauron looking fella I did ages ago. I remember my brush pen was running out and I just wanted to exploit that cool dry brush texture. I really like it, and want to figure out if I can do something more with it.

And here’s some of the stuff I’ve been doing for Cypher Brewing Co. recently. They had their 2nd Anniversary celebration and wanted to do a three set of tinnies that connected up to paint a larger picture. I’m slowly expanding the lore of the “Cypher Universe” that I posted about a while ago.

These beer can designs each have a sacred tablet that’s been found in “The Big Wet”, “The Dessert”, and “The Chaos Realm” respectively. They join up to illustrate a wielder of great power within the lands: THE KNOWLEDGE KEEPER. This owl holds the literal key to unlocking the past and shaping the future. There are little hints and bits of information in the art and puzzles that continue this thread.

INPUT

Here’s the top three movies I’ve seen this month:

I saw the TV glow is a human-centric-scifi-metaphor. It’s not describing my life experience at all and for a lot of people this will probably make this a difficult watch. I loved it, really got me out of my skin and hit me with a deep existential dread. Which is sort of the theme for each of these three movies. My takeaway of this movie is the complexities around accepting (or not) a gender identity.

Videodrome is a classic Cronenburg tale way ahead of it’s time released in 1983. A prescient warning about our relationship with screens and mass media. This hallucinatory trip into the abyss of the bloke who gave us “The Fly” is something that probably should have never been made, who’s bank rolling these things? Probably one of the weirdest things I’ve ever seen.

I feel like Gummo is a movie you can smell, absolute trash from start to finish, a very uncomfortable watch but very much worth it. Killer soundtrack, constant sensory overload, some pitch black humour that examines some very ugly human traits. This movie did the unbearable spaghetti scene long before killing of a sacred deer.

We’ve inherited a record player set up and vinyl and are slowly working our way through them. It’s been such a nice experience, really different to endless playlists dictated by an algorithm. These are the top three records so far, you can click each picture and it’ll open up the tracks in youtube. The turntable has a pitch shift slider and I can’t get enough of the Little River Band record pitch shifted much slower, incredible lazy arvo vibes.

Books I read this month:

FEBRUARY 25

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I spent my time this month working on some secret art that I can’t share yet. So not a lot to report, I did some little post-it note sketches based on haikus a friend and I were sharing.

I wanted to see if I could turn one into a more fleshed out acrylic painting, but I’m not that happy with the results. I’m resisting the urge to immediately paint over it. I used the yellow paint I recently painted our front door with and tried to match the grey of our feature wall. It was meant to be a load bearing painting that ties our eclectic living space together. I reckon I’ll have another crack with the same ideas but better execution.

I’ve developed the habit of saving up scraps of cardboard that could potentially be canvasses and this month I prepped all of them with the same burnt sienna textured splatter background, 16 in all. I’ve been doing little experiments with these, here’s a few of them:

INPUT

This month I’ve finally started my career as a registered nurse after a very rocky 4 years of study. It’s a time of big changes as I try and carve out a new schedule that ultimately has more freedom and financial stability. Both key ingredients for me to make my best art.

Slow month for movies, these are the best two I watched. I’ve been waiting so long for Maxxxine, I absolutely loved X and Pearl, the two predecessors. Ti West makes horror that balances references of the best that came before his time with kitsch and meta tropes. I think this is the first movie I’ve seen that Giancarlo Esposito was allowed to just have fun with his character. Alien is a rewatch, as I continue through the series in chronological order. Still not sure which is best Alien or Aliens.

Click image for a track. The new King Parrot music hits on the same reasons I got hooked on them in the first place over a decade ago now. Some tasty aussie grindcore with a hint of thrash and hardcore. Slatts gives an oscar worthy performance in the new music video.

Click image for a track. Corbin put out this one album ‘ Mourn’ that was one of the saddest things I’d ever heard, it was hypnotic, I used to listen to it a fair bit. He’s just dropped new music and the music videos are pretty wild, check them out but fair warning there are strong themes of hopelessness,

Click image for a track. I found Dead Poet Society on a Youtube Music radio based off my listening habits. I swear those things are getting smarter. Quiet often they just recycle stuff I’ve already listened to but every now and then there are some gems.

Books I’ve read this month include:

JANUARY 25

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Last year we had a fantastic little get away meeting up with friends in Coonabarabran. I did some quick mini perspective studies of building around town. It was nice inserting art into the moment rather than hunching over my drawing board alone after the fact.

Across the road from our accomodation was a ‘top shop’ that had seen better days. Seeing it in person and imagining it’s lifespan brought up a sort of nostalgic, melancholic catharsis that I wanted to capture. I finally got around to it this month.

My art swap with the talented young artist Freddy continues. It turns out we both love zombies, here’s what Freddy gave me to work with.

I used to spend hours copying art from The Walking Dead comic series. I love how they did away with the internal monologue that comics usually lean on for exposition. They did so much with just subtle changes in body language, expression or changing viewpoints. I also loved how consistent the art style was committing to the high contrast black and grey for the entire series. However that’s not very exciting for a young artist so I took inspiration from another big comic book influence Francesco Francavilla, I love this artist’s sketchy high contrast work with flat complementary colours.

They say write what you know. I used to work as a consultant for government agencies and have seen a zombie or two in my time.

I drafted a design for my banjo all the way back in 2017 and transferred most of it to the banjo back then except I didn’t have the right colour or markers for the background, until this month.

And here is some of the work I’ve done for Cypher Brewing Co this month.

INPUT

It’s that time of year when you’ve passed the stress of Christmas and we’re inevitably travelling up and down the east coast visiting family and friends. These interactions always make me a bit introspective about how my life has been changing compared to the people I value which inevitably influences my art.

These were my favourite movies this month. Nosferatu was so beautiful, every frame a painting, I’m already an Eggers fan so was probably always going to love this movie. It has so many good homages to the original Nosferatu movie, old Dracula movies and also Bram Stoker’s Dracula novel. My interpretation of the movie is that it highlights the view of women’s sexuality from a patriarchal society’s gaze. It’s set in 1830s Germany but we still exist in a highly patriarchal society and the messages still ring true.

Maniac Cop and Maniac Cop 2 are such terrrrible movies, so bad they are good. If you’d like to know the premise of the movie they had a rapper explain it in the end credits listen here.

Wolfman was not what I thought it was going to be, it has also copped so much hate. If I separate it in my head from my favourite werewolf movies (The Cursed, Dog Soldiers, Werewolves Within, The Wolf of Snow Hollow) I can still appreciate it. I feel like it did a fantastic job of showing someone being disconnected from reality, it made me think of someone going through dementia. It had some awesome practical effects and had a message about cycles of trauma and fathers passing anger down the genetic line.

Here’s the music I’ve been into this month. As always a pretty eclectic mix:

Click the image for a track. I’ve been inspired to get better at Jazz on brass after seeing the Harry James Angus gig last month, Howard Johnson is a mad man, can’t get enough.

Click image for a track. Imperial Triumphant are definitely an acquired taste, not really sure how to describe them, maybe avant-garde-black metal-jazz? Their music just has layers that you can peel back the more you listen to them, extremely talented musicians and super creative.

Click image for a track. The Callous Daoboys not only have the best band name they also have catchy tracks that are a fusion of mathcore, emo and nu metal and they’ve just released new music. Stick to the end of the double music vid and cop a rare triple arf.

I’ve been absolutely ripping through books this year. I’m trying not to spend time on youtube or TV series and I’m already off socials so I’m trying to spend this time reading or making art instead. Download Storygraph and hit me up @pduthie. Here’s what I’ve read this month:

DECEMBER 24

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Probably the most exciting thing that’s happened for me regarding art this month is my artist friend Freddy instigated an art swap! His passion and dedication to his art really hypes me up and makes me want to try harder and get myself out of my comfort zone. The idea so far is that we just vibe off what the other person has drawn, here’s what Freddy put in the post for me:

Very kind of Freddy to give me subject matter he knows I love: rabbits, motorbikes, veggies and living dangerously. In return I did an alternate cover for his comic. You know how those last few pages in a trade have other artists have a run at their own ideas for the same subject matter? Here’s mine, it’s giving Biker Mice from Mars:

Otherwise I did a couple of acrylic paintings, one being the final in the set of seven smaller hyper colour skulls:

The other being a larger version of one of the smaller ink drawings I did in November:

I did my fourth Super Smash Bros traditional tattoo design with Richter Belmont from Castlevania making the cut:

And like always there was a decent batch of work for Cypher Brewing Co. This month I created a super detailed colouring page with lots of little hidden puzzles. It wouldn’t look like it but planning it all out and refining it took over 10 hours. I don’t think they’ve released it yet so don’t tell them it’s popped up here:

I also worked on fleshing out a bit of a story that connects all of the art I’ve been doing for the brewery for the last couple of years. I think they’re planning to use this in a pretty big way this year so keep your eyes peeled:

I’ve also started making some harder puzzles that are much more obviously something to be solved:

INPUT

This month was so lovely to be back home and doing lots of fun stuff with friends and family. It really made me feel so grateful for what I have and that I get to choose to spend my spare time pursuing creativity.

We met up with some friends and rented a place in the central coast for the Rolling Sets Festival. GFlip was a massive stand out, they deserve all the praise and accolades received recently, also Ruel, Peach PRC and the Good Kids rounded out my favourite acts. I’m actually in the Good Kids linked music video holding up the surfboard haha.

We saw an incredible Louisiana jazz set in a little local community hall from Harry James Angus (Of Cat Empire fame). Everyone was decked out in 1920s gear and jumping out of their seats to dance. I immediately went home to get my hands on some jazz scales to practice on tuba.

These were the best two movies I watched this month, both scary but for different reasons and in different degrees. I think the Quiet Place series is fantastic, this was a rewatch for me. The set up instantly builds tension, it does a great job of growing the world established in the first movie, and the thing that makes these movies good is the affection the family members have for each other. “Room” is much, much scarier because it can and does actually happen. It is deeply harrowing but still finds moments of beauty and devotion.

I’ve really been leaning into classical music this month Debussy, Dvorak, Prokofiev in particular. I think Debussy’s La Mer is one of my favourite pieces to just fall into at the moment. I’ve linked it above. Fun fact, it was partly inspired by The Great Wave of Kanagawa by Katsushika Hokusai and had this art on the cover of the score when it premiered. We’ve also recently played through “Untitled Goose Game” and that beautiful soundtrack is renditions of Debussy’s Preludes from Book 2.

NOVEMBER 24

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November for the last 3 years has been two things: Firstly I always seem to be somewhere away from home on a nursing placement; and secondly and most importantly it’s Ausmusic Drawing Month. A friend started this challenge, they pick an Australian band for each day of the month who are mostly small time bands. They share this list with us and we all (try to) start and finish a piece each day, raising awareness for the bands and raising money for the music industry charity: Support Act.

I pick a different theme to stick to each year. Last year I redid their band name into a metal logo, the year before I illustrated each band as a retro toy advertisement. This year I did each piece traditionally in my own abstract style.

I’m happier with some more than others. I’m glad I committed to doing all the art analog and in a style that’s fun for me, it’s something I’ve developed myself through trial and error over the years. I love that it doesn’t really on being precise, overly detailed or symmetrical which I feel like a lot of my other work does. It’s strength is in the chaos, contrast and imbalance.

INPUT

The element most impacting my creativity this month is being out of my comfort zone for a sustained amount of time. I learnt about the anterior mid-cingulate cortex which basically is a part of out brain involved in functions such as pain processing, cognitive control, emotion regulation, and decision-making, particularly in tasks requiring effort or conflict resolution. The mid-ACC integrates information about physical and social threats and is crucial for adaptive responses to challenging situations. It’s also something we can exercise and strengthen, I feel like this is something that I’ve always known is true and have worked towards, “ Easy choices hard life. Hard choices easy life”.

The three top movies I watched this month include:

The Moogai is an Australian horror with Jon Bell directing, a Bundjalung/Wiradjuri man, focused on the trauma of the stolen generation and the very apparent systemic racism Indigenous people still face today. It was harrowing. The worst parts were from lived experience with our institutions like schools, police, and hospitals. But the supernatural element and monster design was also done really well. Get out and see it.

Perfect Days is a must watch if you’re sick of all movies having an overly ambitious protagonist who always wants more from their life, and is always striving towards some unattainable future. Our protagonist Hirayama, a toilet cleaner in Tokyo, finds beauty and contentment in each moment. The movie goes over his daily routine in great detail but instead of this being bleak and crushing like it would in similar movies, it’s simplicity is like meditation.

Return of the Living Dead is from 1985 and surprisingly holds up really well. It’s so much fun and should be seen as a comedy rather than a horror. It has a really decent script with hilarious dialogue and doesn’t only rely on gore and dumb jokes. I think I’ll have to watch the rest of the series.

I listened to so much good new Australian music this month, it’s hard to pick what I enjoyed most but here’s three music videos that I really enjoyed. See the first image for some more recommendations

  1. Locket by The Lonesomes

OCTOBER 24

OUTPUT

Mostly work for Cypher Brewing Co. this month and not too much for myself. I recognise this is something I have to keep an eye on, too many commissions and I can’t really keep motivated. But there were some really fun ones that I’m pretty proud of in this mix.

This one is meant to be a knock off of the excellent 90s movie with Brendan Fraser, Adam Sandler and Steve Buscemi. I illustrated two of my mates into it as well.

I think this one is my favourite beer can art I’ve done yet. It’s got some really interesting forms, textures and I love the colour palette. I did a bit of research into Greek mythology to figure out what imagery would fit and make sense, then had a great time hand lettering a new font style. I think it all came together really nicely.

This design was the exact opposite. Aaaabsolute dogshit, and pretty funny in hindsight. I stayed up way too late meeting deadlines for other art and just pushed this one through at the same time. At no point in the multiple hours it took to make this did I realise it was probably a bad idea to illustrate a car crash on a beer can. Fucking idiot haha. And it’s a terrible composition and colour palette on top of that as well. It’s great to have a second set of eyes look over your work before you get too deep into it.

But to be fair “Dream Collision” is a really difficult abstract kinda name to think of appropriate and catchy imagery for. Sure there’s a cosmic spacey vibe, but would that image have a focal point that can sit in the middle of a beer can? I tried and I can tell ya I couldn’t figure it out. In the end I bounced ideas of my partner and we decided that the only collision to safely illustrate is two schooners on a sunny day and this was the end result which is a faaair bit better than the first attempt.

I made a new carton design that’s pretty fun. The top is meant to be like a vintage bank vault door. The details in the design provide enough info to solve the cipher and unlock a hidden message. The design on the sides you can rotate so that they tesselate and make up a larger image when you stack them. Here’s my initial design and the little mockup I printed off and folded up to make sure I had the correct images on the right panels, and then how they turned out.

The last piece I finished this month was a collaboration with a talented Githabul artist Peter Lee. This is my first collaboration on a beer can and I think it turned out beautifully. You can read in the beer’s blurb what this project is about. Peter supplied some of his original work and I adapted it to fit a beer can template and updated some of the cricket symbols.

INPUT

This was a pretty hectic month for art as half of it I was bundled up in an airbnb share house situation interstate as my last nursing placement. It made me really grateful for the set up I have at home with my own tools and drawing board specifically but more generally just space for myself that isn’t just a pokey sweaty bedroom.

It was a good month for movies being spooky season and I used the local cinema as my treat to mark the end of the week and to recognise the work I was putting in. Here’s the top 3 movies I watched this month.

I need to watch all the directors other work for each of these movies. They were all so weird and wonderful with truly emotional performances that made me care about the characters. The wolf of snow hollow was especially impressive, as the director is one of the main characters and had a dark humour that was infectious.

You ever hear vocals that were so brutal they just sounded like two bricks scraping together? (wait until 3min26sec) A mate shared Tavern by Netherwalker with me and I couldn’t stop listening to it which I guess impacted my listening for this month to be quite heavy. Here’s two tracks that were on high rotation:

Tavern by Netherwalker

Amongst the Low and Empty by Signs of the Swarm

Pretty happy that I did a tonne of reading this month as I challenged myself to read 100 pages a day for 10 days in a row, which was actually really hard when you’re on your feet and out of the house either working or commuting to that work for 10 hours a day. Since the 10 days have finished I haven’t been hitting the same number of pages but I’ve definitely been more consistent with reading. Books I started or finished this month included:

SEPTEMBER 24

It looks like I get charged to email out my blog posts, who would have thought, welcome to capitalism baby. So this will be the last one I email, you can check back on the website if you’re interested in updates.

OUTPUT

I got a pack of seven small square canvases for more skull work. I really like how these two came out as a pair, especially the one on the left with the contrasty chunky swirl of a brushstroke and the extra white splatter texture.

The band Daughters was really impactful for me and this album (You Won’t Get What You Want) and album artwork in particular, notice any similarities?

About 2 years ago now it has come to light that the front man Alexis is a piece of work. Which raises the question that seems to keep appearing regarding male artists, can you separate the artist from the art? and should you? I’m keen to hear anyone else’s opinion. I think where I fall on it is that I’m not going to be paying anymore to support the work where funds will go to Alexis, I already own the albums that are important to me. And I won’t shy away from condemning the fella if their music comes up in conversation.

Here are some of the other skulls I’ve done this month. My idea with these is to use the absolute cheapest and most accessible materials. The cheap poster paint for the others ran out of stock so I got a different brand of acrylic that was a bit chunkier and more opaque.

These chunkier, grittier skulls also make me think of album art that I’ve always loved from Converge, I think the albums Jane Doe, and Axe to Fall are my favourites from them.

I put out a fair few designs for Cypher Brewing Co this month. I’ve started playing tuba in our local orchestra and even managed to sneak a couple of tubas into one of the Oktoberfest beer designs.

I finished my last clinical exam for my bachelor of nursing this month and snuck back into the labs to draw the space. I asked other students what the piece should be titled, there were a lot of suggestions but I think “Anxiety Manifest” and “Where Confidence Goes To Die” were most fitting. I wouldn’t change things if I had a second chance because of the people I met along the way and the resilience to incompetence I’ve developed, but it really was a terribly run experience.

I also got to make a cute little colouring page cover for a collaborative cooking booking in the local language Gumbaynggirr.

INPUT

After all the hype of Alien Romulus from last month I kept thinking about how tragic it was that the studio pushed so hard for requel elements pushing out the space for more creative and interesting storytelling which we all know Fede Alvarez is capable of. So I went back and rewatch Prometheus and Alien Covenant which both copped a lot of criticism at the time. It was so refreshing, they were taking big swings, and covering new ground.

I really liked the original Dutch version of Speak No Evil and did not have high hopes for the English remake. I couldn’t keep my eyes off James McAvoy it was like watching a car crash in slow motion he was so unsettling and sinister when he wasn’t an outright monster. Without giving too much away the endings of the two movies were very different and I prefer the original, fits the tone a lot better. These movies are an examination of the lengths we go to for social niceties, how none of us want to rock the boat, our own values and morals even take a back seat to avoid confrontation.

Beetlejuice 2 was such a good sequel! Perfectly hit the tone of the original and continued lots of the same themes with Burton’s unique style of silly dark comedy. Very funny that he wrote his current girlfriend into the movie for no apparent reason though.

Perihelion Live (with Jay Weinberg) - KGLW

Music for me this month has been absolutely dominated by King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard live streaming all of their shows on their US tour. I feel like this has literally changed the music landscape, being able to access all of your favourite bands shows for free is absolutely wild. These guys have 26 albums across so many genres, they jam with all of their tracks changing them and combining them, I literally don’t have enough time to consume the amount of art they’re putting into the world. The clip above has Slipknot’s ex drummer join them on stage, another band that has been so important to me. Below is one of my favourite live sets:

Nonagon Suite Live in Newport - KGLW

The books I’ve started or finished this month have a particular slant towards psychotherapy and mental health care. I’m gearing up to start my graduate year as a mental health nurse next year.

AUGUST 24

OUTPUT

The break from working for Cypher was very short lived haha. Sometimes you gotta close a door to open a window. I’m back at the drawing board and pumping out designs. Here’s some I did this month:

I also recently got my hands on most of the tap art decals that I’ve designed for Cypher, and it was nice reflecting on the amount of work I’ve put into it over the last 18 months

I’ve been having lots of fun just sinking time into a singular subject with a very basic process that can be started and finished in one sitting. I read a book and watched a video on this idea a few years ago and it really clicked with me, and my god have I been pumping out these skulls.

INPUT

I rewatched the entire SCREAM movie franchise. The first movie is such an iconic idea and execution, it’s a great slasher while still being fun, campy and full of satire. If they edged closer to parodying horror tropes rather than satirising them we get the Scary Movie franchise. In my opinion Scream 3 is the only real stinker in the series. Here’s my ranking of the entire franchise:

  1. Scream (1996)

  2. Scream 4 (2011)

  3. Scream 2 (1997)

  4. Scream 5 (2022)

  5. Scream 6 (2023)

  6. Scream 3 (2000)

I really enjoyed Late Night with the Devil, horror set in the 70’s hits different. It had elements of found footage, possession, and a decent amount of comedy.

Alien Romulus did not disappoint. The director Fede Alvarez blew me away with the super gory Evil Dead (2013), it holds the record for the most fake blood with over 260,000L. Unfortunately it was pretty clear in Alien Romulus that the studio really wanted to include lots of callbacks to the other Alien movies, some that hadn’t even occurred yet in the timeline which was stupid. But overall the practical effects and creative ways to problem solve with the xenomorphs and face huggers was a very fun watch.

New albums by both Chatpile and Amyl and The Sniffers are on the horizon, they’ve both been trickling out singles that I’ve had on high rotation:

Books I finished or started this month:

JULY 24

Lots happening in July because we decided to take our first international holiday together in 9 years. Before this most of our time and resources were geared towards saving for our next batch of overseas travel in a cycle, I guess we’re at a different stage in our lives now. We went to Indonesia, spent some time in East Java and hiked into Mt Bromo and Mt Ijen, two active volcanoes. Then went to Nusa Penida, an island off Bali with the main mission to swim with GIANT MANTARAYS! We found them, they were incredible. They can get up to 5m wingspan.

OUTPUT

When there was a bit of spare time I’d work on a 5 point perspective drawing of where we were that day. I think 5 point perspective, or fish eye drawing, or curved linear perspective is really interesting for the same reason I’m interested in cubism. They’re both meant to be truer representations of how we view and experience, here’s an interesting video explaining how to do it. These style of drawings are particularly good for indoor settings, I’m happier with some of these more than others, usually I do them about three times bigger but these are the travel bite sized variety.

I also managed to find some choice sticker locations. If I’m new to the location I’m always careful to try and hit spots that already have a bit of coverage.

I’m doing a series of reflective cubist storytelling pieces, one for each hospital placement I do. I worked out the composition, and line work for my fifth one. Next steps are to do a colour study and then fully commit with watercolour for this one.

It’ll be a bit clearer once it’s coloured but some of the experiences I wanted represented in this piece are: Identical twin security guards, caravan life, cardiac patients and telemetry, stingray attack, alcoholism, and a broken car door and window.

I’ve decided to take a break from doing the design work for Cypher Brewing Co. for the moment, here’s my last can design, going out with a bang:

I’ve also cut off all my commissioned work. I want to get back in touch with doing art for myself and not ruin what’s been my strongest coping mechanism and source of motivation since I could pick up a pencil. I think making the conscious choice that I don’t want to rely on my creativity as my sole source of income has been the best thing I’ve done in the last few years. Reading Big Magic really helped form my opinion. Here’s two of my last commissions from last month, these may not be the final versions:

INPUT

Obviously this month the biggest input that’s been inspiring me is the trip to Indonesia. I love being thrown into new environments for the first time, some of the stuff that sparks joy:

  • Seeing the different shapes and colours in their flora. Natural beauty in general

  • People watching, what’s fashionable, and how chaotic things can seem as an outsider

  • How cities versus villages look. What sort of statues, architecture, how they do or don’t dress up the streets

  • Seeing hand painted signs and different languages hand painted

Slow month for movies, I only watched 8 and these were the top 3. I went through the whole Hell House LLC series, if you don’t like found footage it’s not for you but I loved how fun they were on such a low budget and pretty sure they were under 90 mins each. Long Legs had such a good marketing campaign but the movie was quite different to the marketing, which I liked. It had a bit of everything in there, definitely kept me guessing and the performances, sound design and cinematography were top notch. Deadpool and Wolverine was really good, I grew up copying my favourite characters from comics and have gotten pretty sick of marvel movies but this one was worth it. SO much fan service.

My top listens for this last month. I’ve jumped on the Joey Valence and Brae bandwagon like the rest of the world, so catchy. The newer Fontaines D.C. tracks have a quality of bleakness and despair that I absolutely love, the inhale in starburster has me coming back regularly.

These are the new books I’ve started in July. Lanny was fantastic, not really sure how to describe it maybe a surrealistic, existential, folk horror. Some of the more poetic passages had me repeating the phrases just to see how they’d feel in my mouth.

Like all Irvine Welsh novels I pick up I couldn’t put The Long Knives down. This is the first strictly crime book of his I’d read and the filth, grit, guilt, emotional distress and chaos fit perfectly.

Legendborn is something my better half recommended because of how it authentically weaves in generational trauma and racism into contemporary fantasy. I don’t usually read YA and felt it has been a bit slow to start but some big plot points are starting to drop.

JUNE 24

I don’t have too much of a plan with these updates but I’m always super interested in what inspires other creative people and also how their work changes across a timeline. So to add a bit of a structure I’m going to include art that I’ve made and art that I’ve consumed.

OUTPUT

Did a few bits and pieces for Cypher Brewing Co. You can see my alternate version of Omerta ( a mafia code of silence) where I illustrated what happens if you break Omerta: You’ll be sleepin wit da fishes! I love seeing full can designs together in a shot.

I’ve been getting back into more traditional acrylic painting by making it more fun for myself. The trick is to paint as fast as you can and not worry about symmetry or brushwork or any of the usual stuff I spend way too long agonising over.

I’ve also been learning more about types of cubism and following specific artists through their evolving work. To do this Google Arts and Culture has been a life saver! You can do virtual gallery tours, zoom right in and see textures and brushstrokes and read about the period, the artist and the context of the art. I’ve also been enjoying these channels on youtube: Contemporary Art Issue, Great Art Explained, and Crash Course Art History.

I find my abstract cubist work to consistently be the most interesting and enjoyable stuff recently. I can cram in so much personal storytelling into each image and it’s such a change from getting too hung up on perfection and traditionally beautiful looking work. I can still include high contrast and my colour blindness doesn’t really matter haha. To get my head in the zone I’ve been doing quick little post it notes as well as reveiwing my past work for elements I like.

The main piece I’ve been working on this month is like one of those MY STYLE NOW VS. THEN type deals.

8 years ago I painted the picture to the right and like every artist I hated the end product but over time I’ve come to quite like it. It’s meant to mash up laid back aussie coastal life with religious iconography with a bit of collage thrown in, I used jute for the powerlines.

Below is my synthetic cubist interpretation of this same artwork. Line work stage and finished.

It felt like a pretty big gamble trying to do something like this symmetrically, and to be honest that probably doesn’t fit the cubist aesthetic. I think I like how it’s turned out. It’s meant to be viewing the ibis through the fourth dimension of time as the viewer walks around the base of the telephone pole. Looking one direction we can see an overcast dreary evening, the other direction is warm sunset. It’s a bit of bushland close to my house that has a tree tunnel which lines up perfectly with a setting sun. The clippings are from our local newspaper and illustrate how the telephone poles, these big ugly structures, interrupt natural beauty but also keep us connected and updated.

INPUT

I love watching movies and this is a regular source of inspiration for me, cos I watch some weird stuff! I have a Letterboxd account if anyone else uses that. My account is a no negativity affair, if I hate a movie I give it 3 stars, love it 5 stars. I watched 24 movies in June, here are the ones that got me thinking the most:

Paprika is absolutely stunningly animated and I can see a very strong likeness with Christopher Nolan’s Inception. Come to Daddy is all kinds of great, I love that Elijah Wood is kicking out the same energy as Daniel Radcliffe and just picking bizarre indie projects, don’t read anything about this one before watching. Godzilla Minus One shoots straight to the top of my favourite Godzilla movie list, it has a heart that Japanese cinema does way better than Hollywood, I’m keen to get my hands on the black and white cut of this. Beau is Afraid gets a lot of hate but it definitely makes me feel things, I really enjoyed it such a good representation of anxiety manifesting.

Pretty eclectic mix but these are the albums I’ve been going back to most regularly this last month. It’s all the major food groups with angry, nihilistic, melancholic, chill, and pump up music. I’m always keen to find new music so hit me with some recommendations.

These are the books I enjoyed. I’ve waited sooo long for Red Side Story, the book before it ‘Shades of Grey’ really rocked my literary world, I didn’t know you were allowed to write books like that. I actually had 2 books that I had the courage to put down and didn’t finish and I usually force myself to endure them until the end and then regret wasting my time, so go me.

BYE SOCIAL MEDIA

It’s happened. I’ve finally become annoyed enough that I’m dragging all of my artwork off of social media. I’ll probably still use the stories functions on insta when I want to promote a finished project or other artists, but I just don’t want to spend time on those platforms anymore. I’ve stripped my phone down to the basics and locked myself out of social media and reddit. So far it’s been amazing!

Going forward I’ll be aiming to write a blog post at least once a month with examples of the different art I’ve been working on. Subscribing to this blog will be the best way to keep up to date with what I’ve been doing and it’ll be outside of the clickbaity 15 sec reel format that’s rotting all of our brains.