Art of Bruce Whistlecraft

On July the 1st the Art Hustle vintage style bubblegum card packs go on sale.

I was honoured to be asked to be a part of series one of this collectors card set made up of artists from around the world.

The Art Hustle is a boutique set of artist and art-based trading cards exhibiting an international group of 75 artists working in street art, toy art, kaiju, sketch, illustration, painting, aerosol art, poster art, tattoo art, digital art, collage, sculpture, photography and more. Inspired by trading cards produced from the 1960’s through the 80’s, the set offers up some vintage-inspired flavour including chipboard card stock and the much-loved wax paper wrapper. Cards also come with interesting facts on the backs that you don’t want to miss.

I have done a bunch of ink drawings on the cards to be randomly inserted in the packs. All the artists in the series have also done original works for insertion so you could get a piece of original art with your bubblegum stick.

Here are some of mine.

I hope it makes the cards smell the way they did when I was a kid.. (It was Hammer Horror cards for me back then..)

A new figure due the end of this year from Arts Unknown.

I have just finished all the design layouts and colourways on this and I am super happy with how it’s looking.
Proto sculpts in the works.

Watch this space.

The fourth yo-yo in the artist series created by The Steve Brown Gallery  will be released Thursday, May 27th only at www.stevebrowngallery.com. This model will feature artwork provided by Doktor A.

This Artist Edition Yo-Yo will be limited to 45 pieces worldwide, and will never be manufactured again.
One side will be laser-engraved with original art, while the other side will be engraved with the artist’s signature and the Steve Brown Gallery logo.

Each yo-yo retails for only $15.00

The yo-yos are made in the United States in the traditional fashion of yo-yos from the 1920s, turned from a single piece of Hard Rock Maple. These wooden yo-yos are meant to evoke a simpler time. The yo-yo is the second-oldest toy in the world and still one of the most popular.

http://www.stevebrowngallery.com/products/artist-edition-yo-yo-4

On May the 27th something cool is going down.

And then coming back up again.

And then going down again….

During the recent trip to Canterbury we spent the day in Whitstable just a few miles away on the coast.
A pleasent little seaside town with some lovely wonky old buildings and interesting little artisan shops.

Whilst we were there we went to look at the house which Peter Cushing lived in for many years (from 1959 when he was making “The hound of the Baskervilles” untill his death). We then had a slap up binge in the little Tudor tea rooms which he also regularly frequented.

The thought of Grand Moff Tarkin with a buttered crumpet by an open fire seems so right dont you think?

I recal a punk song though I dont remember who did it, which had lyrics which went something like :

Peter Cushing lives in Whitstable,
Peter Cushing on his bicycle,
Peter Cushing buying vegetables,
Peter Cushing is IMMORTAL!
Arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Images from the recent “We Heart Wood” show are online now here :
http://www.flickr.com/photos/22051634@N04/sets/72157623459378501/

Last weekend myself and my little family went on a trip down to Canterbury to spend a splendid few days with Julien and Laura, some friends of ours.
Julien is one of those immensely talented artists who simply not enough people know about!
His technical ability with oil paint is outrageous and his choice of subject matter is diverse and surreal.

He has shown all over the UK but not managed to get a foothold in the USA for some reason.
I suggest some of you gallery owners out there invite him into a few of your joint shows soon and see the pieces fly off the walls.

I took a few snaps of his latest series of works whilst I was there.

I do apologise for the low quality of the photos and the iffy reflections. I am sure poor Julien will be shaking his head in disgust at the terrible repros.. (Though to be honest I don’t think any photo can really capture the vibrancy and translucent element of his work.)

Sorry I am not sure what this series is called. But they all have elements of classic hotrod cars, Atomic blasts and Outer Limits characters…

And here are a couple of paintings from last year. His Mechanamorphism series.

And a detail from that last one..

Julien has a couple of pieces in the upcoming  show “Society of Art of Imagination” at La Galleria, Pall Mall, 30 Royal Opera Arcade, London SW1,
from the 19th-24th April. (Nearest tube – Charring Cross/Piccadilly Circus.)

You can see more of his amazing work (and of course buy stuff direct from him) on his website : Baroque Designs

Oh my!

Whatever could this be all about?

The Turnaround.

This is the artwork which will be used by the modelmaker to actually create a 3D version of the figure as a prototype.
Sometimes it will be sculpted by hand, sometimes turned into a virtual 3D render and then outputted to a rapid prototyping machine which generates a resin master form which can them be cleaned up by hand. (But I get ahead of myself.)

I start the turnarounds in pencil in a sketchbook to get it clear in my head and then draw the whole thing out from scratch in a vector drawing program on the computer.
A Turnaround is just what it sounds like. Its views of the figure from various angles to show all the details of the piece and how they relate to each other.
I was sent the vector files of the existing body part I had to build on so started there and built up the rest.

I generally work on all views at the same time so they evolve together, rather than draw the front and then work out the others from that. Its a back and forth process generally refining the details over many passes until it all looks right.
There may be changes that need to be made once the modelmaker starts to work on the piece and finds possible problems such as areas colliding when articulated etc. I have been trained in technical drawing and Industrial Modelmaking though and worked on other peoples prototypes from that perspective for many years so I hope I can forsee most of the problems which may come up and weed them out in this early stage.
The artwork also shows the different parts needed for the toy, but not how each part may have to be broken down further for manufacture.

This artwork is then sent off to the toy company for review.

You may also notice I have locked down the name of the character too by now and had a provisional stab at a packaging logo layout.
It is quite clearly a Gnome. The idea being based on the mythical beings who look after rocks and generally live underground.
I liked the idea of Gnome being an Acronym but felt that was too modern a concept for the design so it became a bit less obvious.
Now he is called the Gyroscopic, Non-Ornamental Mechanised Excavator.
I will give him a more personal name and a backstory later. I am still working on that.

I get asked a lot about how toys get made. The actual process involved and so forth. So I have decided to chronicle the details of a toy I am currently working on.

This is a production piece not a custom work.
I dont show my work-in-progress on my artworks..
I think it spoils the magic.

Luckily these days I get approched by companies who are interested in working with me. Not so long ago I would draw up complicated multi-page idea pitches for new toys and send them out to every company going to see if anyone was interested.
As it was, some were, and various projects got made.
Now people more often than not come to me, which is jolly flattering really.

So it was with a new UK company RAJE Toys. They only set up in November 2009 and intend to hit the ground running.
I know they have other artists on board designing for them right now but I cant talk about that.
Now being a new company it is a bit of a risk going with them as they have no track record. There are a lot of things that can go wrong in the manufacture, packaging, shipping and ditribution of a toy and its all new to them. However they are collectors them selves, have a lot of experience in different areas of the production and retail world and are very enthusiastic. Plus its quite rare to have a company try this in the UK so I thought it a good idea to support them..
Hopefully it all works out.

Their first toy to the market will be Dr. Brain created by artist Jim Frenckingham. (based on an original Munny custom he once did I believe.)

Dr. Brain will stand 7.5″ tall and should retail for $59.95, £39.95 when he is launcged this May. There will be two colorways with a production run of 450 pieces for the regular version and just 50 pieces for the chase.
I think it’s quite an adventurous piece for your first toy. With its transparent parts and ineterchangeable pieces. And should make people take note if they pull it off well.

They asked me to come up with an idea for a design which would use the same body form, but I could add my own new pieces to it.
I chucked around a few ideas and came up with this :

A Steam powered Gnome.
I love the idea that Gnomes are hiding heavy drilling gear under those ubiquitous long pointy hats.
The drawing above is literally a scan from my sketch book with text added. It is purely to give them a very basic idea of what the toy would be about. I didnt spend too long on it or render up a finished digital painting or anything in case it really wasn’t what they wanted.
As it happens, they loved it.
So we moved to the next part.

Drawing up a turnaround……………….