Chris Wahl Art

Michael Jackson

2009-06-30T16:46:00.019+10:00

Love, hate, pity or bewilderment...

Whatever you think of the man, there's no denying the impact he's had on popular culture. There's also no denying the extreme physical transformation that Michael underwent in his lifetime...

This was inked using my new toy, the Pentel Brush Pen (synthetic hairs and refillable cartridges. Great!)

New Tee designs

2009-06-03T00:11:00.009+10:00

Four new Tshirt designs available over at my Redbubble store

Grizzly Grunt

Speak of the Devil

Shrunken Head

The Damned

Jumping teds, shrunken heads and punk co-eds

2009-04-24T00:35:00.041+10:00

WIN a signed 'Jumping Teds' print. Click HERE for details.

Posters and prints now available at my RedBubble store!!

This was done for Rhys McDonald's cheesecake pinup comic, 'Last Call for Sin' which is being released soon down here in Oz.

I make a guest appearance in this pinup as the shrunken head pendant. The inspiration for this piece came from one of my older drawings, DedTedHed.

Inked with felt tip pens (Artlines 0.4, 0.6), with a little bit of brushpen on the hair. Coloured in Photoshop.

Click below for some detail closeups-

Scarlett Johansson

2009-04-17T12:18:00.022+10:00

A caricature of actress Scarlett Johannson as she appeared in the movie, 'Girl with a Pearl Earring' (who's movie poster was based on Vermeer's 17th century painting of the same name).

You can see the various transformations my piece went through from initial pencil sketch to finished painting, here.

More Bettie Page art

2009-04-02T12:59:00.028+11:00

This is the piece I wanted to create back in December for Bettie Page's tribute but at the time I only managed a simple cartoon. So it's a little late to be a tribute, but anytime's a good time to draw Bettie. Expect more soon.

Here's a link showing the pencils and the halfway stage on the colours.

Three humans and a hamster

2009-03-26T22:53:00.007+11:00

More caricature playtime from over at The Drawing Board.

photos

Heroes and Villains

2009-03-13T20:38:00.024+11:00

Fifteen superhero characters for fifteen award categories was the brief on this recent job I did for Desktop magazine and their upcoming annual awards night.

With the help of my agent-extraordinaire Matt Jackson, who wrote the character outlines, I went about designing each one to reflect the award category they represented.

Inked with Pitt pens and coloured in Photoshop.

Categories- Emerging Talent, Web Design, Animation

Categories- Multimedia, Photography: Creative, Post Production

Categories- Packaging, Creative of the Year, Photography: Commercial

Categories- Digital media, Fashion (graphics), Print: Creative

Categories- Illustration, Print: Commercial, People's Choice

Here are the names I came up with for the heroes (from the top)

1. Ember 2. Binary 3. Dr. Defribulator 4. Multi Mbuti 5. Timelapse 6. De Sceptre 7. Transverter 8. Captain Condor 9. Fluoro 10. Circuitbreaker or Mobo (short for motherboard) 11. Mondri Anna 12. Cicada 13. Inkstain 14. Sin7 15. Allura Red

and here are Matt's, which are the official names-

1. Pepper 2. Kazimir 3. Velika 4. Kambo 5. Dagny 6. Chuchot 7. Alex 8. Anton 9. Phebe 10. Mahon 11. Chiara 12. Hewie 13. Berangèr 14. Maksim 15. Verena

Visit the award website to see how it turned out-

Bowie

2009-02-04T20:50:00.025+11:00

As someone who likes to explore different styles in his illustration work, I have the utmost respect and admiration for a musician like David Bowie who manages to explore, experiment and evolve in his music during a career that has spanned five decades! So put me down as a big fan of the man and his music.

This was done for the current David Bowie jam over at The Drawing Board.

The 'painting' started out as a blue ballpoint pen scribble. It was then scanned into Photoshop and with the line colourised on a multiply layer, colour and shading was added using a hard brush with opacity jitter set to pen pressure (this creates transparent to opaque brushstrokes depending on how hard you press. Good for painterly brushstrokes). Then I went to Painter and blended together the line and shading to create a painted look (see my paperboy tutorial for that process in detail). Then it was back into Photoshop where I added detail with the aforementioned hard opacity brush. Noise was added at the end to give it a slight grain, reducing the digital look.

Here's a close up of the face detail

Surprise, surprise...more caricatures!

2009-02-02T23:50:00.008+11:00

More caricatures, more experiments.

I felt myself getting a little conservative in some of my previous caricatures, so the colour one above is an attempt to try and push my exaggerations that little bit further.

With the black and white caricature I added the digital splatter textures as an afterthought. I'm glad I did though as they really add that extra little something to the sinister feel of the drawing.

photos

Cute monsters

2009-01-30T18:05:00.016+11:00

Monsters are so much fun to draw. It really is playtime for the imagination. If I was told I could only ever draw monsters and women for the rest of my life, I'd be very happy. Saying that, I really need to find the time to draw more of both.

These were done as samples for a job which eventually fell through, but I figured they were too cute not to share.

Getting what you give

2009-01-20T11:57:00.006+11:00

More caricatures of fellow caricaturists from the ever popular Drawing Board thread. I've received a whole bunch of terrific caricatures of me in return. Any caricaturists of any calibre should definitely check it out. Great fun.

photos

RIP Bettie Page

2008-12-13T09:45:00.013+11:00

A little caricature tribute of iconic pinup model, Bettie Page who passed away yesterday aged 85.

For those who may have missed it, I did another Bettie piece earlier this year as a tribute to late comic artist, Dave Stevens. You can find that piece here.

Björk caricatures

2008-12-08T23:12:00.014+11:00

A trio of caricatures of eccentric Icelandic singer, Björk from the current December caricature jam over at the Drawing Board.

One pencil, one ink

2008-11-25T09:19:00.011+11:00

A couple more caricatures from the Caricaturists' caricatures thread over at Drawing Board.

Photo Ref

Green Hell concept art

2008-11-14T22:43:00.012+11:00

Back in April 2007 I posted cover art for a script of a WW2 adventure movie titled 'Green Hell' being pitched by Aussie writer/director, David Caesar.

He recently did a rewrite and needed some new drawings to headline each chapter of the script to once again entice would-be investors to help get the film off the ground.

This will be a fantastic movie if it gets made, so hopefully these sketches served their purpose.

Tommy Lee Jones

2008-11-03T00:54:00.017+11:00

Actor Tommy Lee Jones (No Country for Old Men, Men In Black, The Fugitive) from the current caricature jam over at The Drawing Board.

Faber Castell Pitt pen with Photoshop additions.

Kat Von D

2008-10-17T01:10:00.008+11:00

A drawing of the very talented celebrity tattoo artist Kat Von D, well known from the TV series 'L.A. Ink'. This was done for a Drawing Jam over at The Drawing Board.

The green of tattoos and the pink of skin was a great chance for me to experiment with complimentary opposites in the colour scheme. Also in the original reference photo she was wearing an oversized grey singlet which was unflattering and covered half her tattoos, so I had the added challenge of getting everything right underneath. Pretty happy with it.

Two beards and a bird

2008-10-11T23:36:00.011+11:00

Some more fellow caricaturists from the Drawing Board forums.

Their photos.

Paul Newman caricature

2008-10-05T19:41:00.010+11:00

A caricature of the late great Hollywood actor, humanitarian, entrepreneur and car racing enthusiast- Paul Newman. This was for a tribute jam over at The Drawing Board.

For this I used a Tombow brushpen with digital textured brushwork added in Photoshop.

Audrey Hepburn

2008-09-23T09:26:00.039+10:00

Edit 4th October- My third and final contribution to the Hepburn Jam. For this one I was trying to go for that 50's/60's movie poster feel. Here's a link to the original black and white ink drawing.

Edit 29th September- Above is my second Audrey Hepburn caricature from the Drawing Board Jam. This one came a lot quicker and easier (most likely as a result of all the practice I had on the first one below). Much, much happier with the likeness on this one. I used an old Tombow brushpen and added some more detail in Photoshop.

My first attempt at Audrey. I went through countless revisions on this one. The toughest caricature I've done in a long time. This was HB pencil colourised in Photoshop

Cosplay Killer

2008-09-18T19:38:00.001+10:00

I recently added a whole bunch of new Tshirt designs over at my Redbubble store. This is the latest...

Caricature experiments

2008-07-21T14:14:00.001+10:00

A couple more caricatures exploring different inking textures and colour schemes.

Photos

The Thing revisited

2008-07-15T11:55:00.010+10:00

I originally posted my Thing illo a couple of years back, but recently decided to give old Ben Grimm a bit of a makeover. Below is the new version.

Back when I created the original in 2004, I was very wary of making major changes to my 3D work in Photoshop as I thought it would lose some of it's realism and start looking...well, Photoshopped. Four years on I've become a bit less precious about older art, and have also used many different programs together, both 2d and 3d for other jobs, and know that they can be used well together. In the end it's all about the final result, making a job as good as possible no matter how many programs were used in the process.

So from the side-by side comparison above, the most major change you'll notice is his mouth. I was never completely sold on the way the left side seemed to smile. It didn't feel right for the overall expression. To make this change I used what for me is one of the most useful and timesaving tools in Photoshop, the Liquify filter. It lets you push and pull areas of the image with any brush size and degree of subtlety. It's great for making changes to one's artwork which would normally take many hours to redo. Also his brow and nose were adjusted with the Liquify tool as well.

Additional changes were made in the eye area, a new rock texture was overlayed, and a more convincing cigar smoke was created. Also the colour and shadows were adjusted as well.

Overall I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out. Let me know your thoughts.

Edit 9th August 2008- Thought I'd try my hand at a little bit of simple gif animation for my new forum avatar. Bit of a learning curve but it was fun.

Keeping the ball rolling...

2008-07-08T20:42:00.004+10:00

Here's a few recent sketches and drawings.

The first one was for a Spanish fan who wanted a quick sketch of himself. Inked with a Pitt pen and some digital washes converted to dots in Photoshop. I quite like the way the dots turned out. A nice spontaneous feel to it.

The second was a quick caricature inked using an old Tombow brushpen. It's lack of ink and frayed tip gave a good drybrush effect.

Lastly a caricature of fellow caricaturist 'LeftyJoe'. He supplied an extra small reference photo to work from, so I poked fun by drawing his head to match. This was scanned pencil, coloured in Photoshop.

Photos

Magazine illos

2008-07-04T13:25:00.004+10:00

Waaay way back in December 06 I posted a piece for a magazine article about the perils of illustration and fussy clients. Well it's finally getting published in Australian Creative magazine, along with the article written by the multitalented Matt Jackson.

Here are two new spot illustrations which are accompanying the main illo in the article. Once again exploring the problems of fussy clients, the power of the almighty dollar to buy the artist's ability to think for themselves, and the 'bastard child' that your artwork becomes when clients interfere unnecessarily.