Happy Holidays!

2011 has been an amazing year, and 2012 is gearing up to be even bigger. Thank you to everyone who has shown any interest in my work, and to the wonderful collaborators who I'm currently working with. I hope you all have a fantastic Xmas and New Year!

Matt

New Webcomic Page Is Up

After a longer than planned delay I'm now back into the swing of posting weekly pages for "The Secret History Of...." webcomic. Page 15 is up at the gallery HERE.

The Devil's Mark (Page 1)

1st page from a short story for issue 2 of the Velocity comic anthology.

Spidey

A quick Spider-Man piece for this weeks "Oz Comics" drawing jam (I took the minimalist approach in order to avoid drawing all that damn webbing on his suit).

Matt

RIP Joe Simon

Because some days.....

.... you just need to draw Batman.

CBP 2012 Tour Poster

(Mankind) The Crafy Ape

Last night I did the final bit of work that needed doing for the new Crippled Black Phoenix album. We started talking about the album art earlier in the year so this is the first day in a very long time that it's not part of my active "what do I need to do today" thought process. It's finished, the experience has been fantastic, and I can't wait to hold a physical copy of it all in my hands. I've also just finished putting together the poster for the band's European tour for 2012, which I'll post soon, but until then here's the front cover for (Mankind) The Crafty Ape (due for release at the end of January 2012).

Matt

New Book Now Available

SHIFT/PHASE

A 120 page book containing reworked/rebuilt art from the last 3 years. Click on the image for more info. The first 25 orders will be sent an original art sketch card (just send me your order number via the contact form on my website HERE).

2011 - 2012

The last couple of months for 2011 look to remain as busy as those preceding it. The 23BROKENMACHINES online exhibition continues to develop (more progress shots will start to appear on that blog in the coming weeks). I've got 2 new art books nearing completion. The first, SHIFT/PHASE, will be available in the next week or two. The second won't be available for sale publicly at this stage, but will be available in other ways (confused yet?).

2012 is gearing up to be an exciting year. I'm already talking with people about upcoming collaborations, including a new project with Justin Greaves of Crippled Black Phoenix, and a joint exhibition with one of my favourite Melbourne artists Kaitlin Beckett. I'll also have a few new comics out on the shelves, including the return of a certain gas masked chap......

Matt

Nov Stuff

Some Updates

Work on the new CBP album art will be wrapping up soon. It's been a fantastic project to be a part of, and there will be more of it in the future. Work also continues on a few different short comic stories, as well as preparations for the 23BROKENMACHINES online exhibition (which may also become a book). I have a few other books in the works as well, one of which will feature this guy....


It's a completely reworked book that I had started putting together earlier in the year, with a lot more now added to it.

Matt

BOOM!

A small piece I recently did for an upcoming video game themed exhibition.


"An 80's Arcade Icon Wages A Jihad Against The Modern Gaming Era"

Sketch Cards

While I hammer away at a few larger projects I'm going to start producing a stack of Leroy sketch cards (pencil, ink, inkwash) which I'll be selling online, probably at my Etsy store (which I haven't had a chance to use much for awhile now). When the first batch is ready I'll post up some pics and a link.

Matt

Velocity

While work continues on the CBP album art I'm also putting together a short story for the Velocity comic anthology. I thought it would be fun to return to my first ever published comic story and redo it from scratch. It's not a simple case of re-drawing what's already there though. I've been able to find some more information on the old folk tale that the story was based on, so it's a total re-write and the final story is very different from the original. Here's a sneaky pic of the first page (minus text).

Matt

Online Exhibition Blog

Some Society6 Stuff

For International/Interstate Folks

Throughout the preparation and showing of The Justice Will Be So Fantastic exhibition I received a lot of messages from people who don't dwell in Melbourne saying they wish they could attend. I've had some of those people also say that international shipping on large/framed/heavy items makes it difficult to buy some original art.

For quite some time I've been toying with the idea of doing an online-only exhibition, with all the art dropping in one big hit and being available to buy at the same time (unframed and easier to ship).

Seems like the perfect time to get this worked out. My focus is mostly on CBP-related work at the moment (which I'm having a total blast with), but over the next couple of months I'll be slowly putting together a new themed collection of work to post online, probably late November/early December.

More info soon, and thanks to everyone for the interest.

Matt

Exhibition Book

A limited edition hardcover collecting all the art from the recent exhibition will soon be available to pre-order.  Each copy will come with a signed print and a page of concept sketches from my exhibition sketchbook.  There will only be 32 copies available.  The book will be 6inches x 9inches, 36 full colour pages, and will cost $50 shipped within Australia and $60 shipped anywhere else in the world.  If you'd like to reserve a copy you can do so by using the contact form on my website HERE.

Exhibition Gallery

I've added a new gallery to my website featuring all the art from the recent "The Justice Will Be So Fantastic" exhibition. You can check it out HERE.

Post-Exhibition Ramblings

A big thank you to everyone who made it along to last Friday's opening night for "The Justice Will Be So Fantastic". Response to the exhibition has been great. Artboy Gallery is the largest space I've exhibited in so far, and it was initially quite daunting as I started hanging the art on those long white walls. Thankfully I had the perfect amount of work completed, and it was a nice change for the art to have plenty of breathing room within a gallery set up.

Later this week I'll be posting photos of all the work from the show, until then here's a quick shot of one of my personal favourite pieces from it. This is 60cm x 55cm ink on wood. I'd worked on wood before (panels and skateboards) but always with paints. This was the first time I had used inks on wood and it turned out to be a very exciting medium to work with. I'll definitely be doing more of it in the future.


So what's next? The rest of September will be spent working on the art for the new Crippled Black Phoenix album as well as a couple of short comic stories for various upcoming anthologies. October I'll be getting a new art book together and diving much deeper into the new Leroy comic. And the wheels have already started turning for other things running through into 2012.

Matt

Invurt Interview

In the lead up to this Friday's exhibition opening I fielded a few questions from the fine folks at Invurt. Click HERE to check it out.

Around The Studio

UVO Custom Toys (for the exhibition)

Stencil (a portion of the "Wendigo" deck)

Stuff

Just over 2 weeks to go til the exhibition launches. Still have a few pieces to finish up but I'll have them completed with time to spare. I'm going to have a few limited edition print sets available at the show as well (very limited, probably only 5 sets, possibly 10). The gallery have had some huge A0 posters made up to promote the show which I'll try and get some photos off soon.

I'm currently working on the art for the new CBP album, so it's pretty much non-stop CBP action in the studio at the moment, which is fine by me. Although once the exhibition work is completed I need to dive into a few short comic stories for different publishers before returning to continue working on the new Leroy comic.

The Secret History Of Skullboy webcomic will also be returning very soon!

Matt

Sept Exhibition Video

02SEPT11

5 Day "Everything's More Fun With Monkeys" T-Shirt Special

The Justice......

Society 6 Prints

Exhibition Poster

Exhibition + Comic Stuff

Lonely Monsters, my first graphic novel (originally self-published and now available via FEC Comics) will soon be available in digital form for all you iPad/iPhone users. More info on this should be available soon. It will be joined by a few other comic bits and pieces, some of which have been out of print for awhile now.

Exhibition preparations continue to march forward. My current webcomic, The Secret History Of Skullboy, will be going on a short hiatus, returning in August, so I can focus solely on the exhibition as well as work on the new Leroy comic. I'll have some more news regarding the exhibition soon, along with a few teasers of some of the art from it.

Matt

Tumblr

I've had a Tumblr account for awhile but haven't really been doing much with it. As I'm currently using this blog to focus on exhibition-related art I thought I'd finally start using the Tumblr for non-exhibition art stuff. You can visit it HERE.

Exhibition Promo

Update

We're just a few days out from the start of July, which also marks the beginning of a very busy last half of the year for me. The first half of the year has been quite a scattered one, with some bumps in the road, so I'm really excited about having a few projects to focus on for an extended period of time. These include the continued exhibition work, the new CBP album, 2 new Leroy comics, an as yet unnamed graphic novel, and a couple of other things that I can't talk about right now.

Throughout this time I will continue on with the weekly webcomic "The Secret History Of Skullboy", which you can read HERE. And I will still be uploading the odd bits and pieces at my various online stores HERE.

Thanks

Matt

Vigilante #6

Trying out some new pens and brushes while working on UVO toy designs.

Old Stuff + New Stuff

With a few hundred pieces of art currently being available on various art/POD sites I've decided it's time to go through and do a major cull of some work. Some of the older pieces are still relevant to what I'm doing/where I'm going, but other pieces seem like distant memories that serve no purpose and blur creative clarity. So over the next couple of weeks I'll be cutting a lot of them out (many of them will stay in the galleries of my website though, in an archive or sorts).

While my focus is dedicated to a couple of important projects at the moment I'm also starting to rough out ideas and themes for a new series of t-shirts and prints. Taking some themes I've previously worked with but pushing them in a different direction.

I've also got a few of my existing shirts going up at a new online t-shirt store soon. I'll post the website details when they launch.

Matt

T-Shirt Design

A design I'll be incorporating into the 1/6 custom toys,and also releasing as a t-shirt (soon).

Another 1/6 Promo

Webcomic And Other Things

The last page of my weekly webcomic is up HERE.

I've been uploading regular new t-shirt designs to a few websites for the last couple of years, and with a few hundred designs now available I've decided to have a break from it. The designs I've put together for t-shirts are generally random "Hmmm, what do I feel like drawing today?" kind of things, and with 2011 being dedicated to an increased focus on long-term goals it just doesn't make sense to keep doing that. So from this point onwards I'll be taking a different approach to any t-shirts I do create.

I'll be selling most of them directly, generally linked in to larger projects, and they'll mostly be produced in limited numbers. The first of these designs, for the Sept exhibition, will be available in the next couple of weeks.

Thanks

Matt

Promo Stuff

Working on a few ideas for promo images for the exhibition. These aren't locked in, just trying to nail the right atmosphere before adding sponsor info and other details.

1/6 Toys

I've been collecting 1/6 scale toys for a few years now, mostly from the 3A range (one of the reasons I was so excited to have 3A come onboard as a sponsor for the September exhibition). Over the last couple of months I've been hunting down various items to use in customising the bodies 3A sent me for inclusion in the show. I'm down to a few items that I still need to track down, but have everything else I need so will be diving into the toy side of things soon.

My plan is to have all the toys set up in the one diorama display for the exhibition, but I'm still working out the technical side of things there.

I'll start posting regular images of the toys soon as they start to develop.

Matt

Stuff

I was talking with someone yesterday about the reasoning behind keeping numerous projects active on a regular basis, and during the conversation realised that it's not always clear as to why a lot of artists do this. I assume the reasons are different from person to person, and for me it's the result of a number of things.

The main two reasons are motivation + efficiency. The greatest benefit to having multiple projects going at the same time is that you can bounce around between them. Sometimes the paint just doesn't want to land right, so I jump over to a comic page, and so on. Other times a project can hit a wall, and rather than waste all your time stressing about the situation you can channel that energy into something else while figuring out ways to break through that wall. By doing this you can remain focused and maintain a solid output of work.

I also find it helps to balance a range of long-term and short-term projects. Long-term projects can carry a range of issues with them, which can start to weigh you down a bit if it's your sole focus. But you can lift some of that weight by diving into a new t-shirt design or commission job, which are usually more freewheeling affairs. The short-term projects provide a more immediate pay-off (financially and psychologically) which can help to keep your spirits high.

The dream projects are those that include a combination of long and short term time frames, such as the work I've been doing with Crippled Black Phoenix. The various projects that fall under that banner offer me the opportunity to spread my creative wings and experiments across different themes and mediums.

Today is a great example of that, as I started by cutting out a stencil for the exhibition, then roughed out a new t-shirt idea, and am now moving over to listen to demo tracks while working on some concept sketches. After that I'll be working on one of the inkwash illustration pieces for the exhibition, coming back to the project I started the day with. A nice full circle with some exciting detours along the way.

That's a good day right there.

Matt

Time of Yer Life / Born for Nothing / Paranoid Arm of Narcoleptic Empire (Pt. 1)

Some of the songs being represented for the exhibition are being split across a few pieces, such as this one. This deck shows the public, more popular myth of Evel Knievel. Larger than life and an almost heroic figure. It will be juxtaposed with another deck that will feature a more realistic vision of the man, separated from the myth.

The Road

Original Art + Commissions

I'll be putting some more original art up for sale soon, probably through the blog instead of the Etsy store (makes it easier to work out deals with multiple orders). I've also been getting more commission inquiries, something I'm also open to. If you're interested in commissioning anything you can contact me via the contact form on my website HERE with some details and I'll get back to you.

Exhibition preparations continue to move forward, I'll be posting some images throughout the week. For the next few months the majority of my workload will be focused on the exhibition, comics, and new CBP album. Within that time there will also be more work and eventual releases from 4PMART and more. It's a very exciting time in the MDART world.

Thanks

Matt

June Charity Stuff

Throughout the month of June all art and merch sales from my various online stores will be donated to The Wayne Foundation. Go to my main website HERE for links.

Thanks

Matt

U.V.O. #1 (1/6 Operative)

PREPARING FOR JUSTICE (1/6 STYLE)

New Webcomic Page Is Up

Troublemaker (WIP close up)

U.V.O

Spent the last couple of hours painting some of the accessories for the U.V.O. custom toys for the exhibition. I think my brain's a bit confused as it spent the morning working in inks, afternoon painting, and evening focusing on toys. Time to give it a rest and dive back into it tomorrow.

Exhibition Promo (with sponsor logos)

Artboy Interview

Click HERE to check out an interview from the latest episode of Good Game (featuring myself and others discussing the recent Artboy VS Fanboy exhibition at Artboy Gallery).

Matt

Troublemaker WIP (Guy Fawkes)

Justice!

New Webcomic Page Is Up