Drawing and watching TV and drawing

It's beneficial and fun to just do rough sketches of heads and faces while watching TV, of people you see. Here are a bunch of them from my sketchbooks.

No, that last one isn't me. Wipe that smirk off your face!

The first time I wore a face mask in public was in Vietnam in 2018. The pollution in Ho Chi Minh City was pretty bad, so I bought some from a convenience store. I felt kinda stupid wearing it, but once I was in the street I realized no one cared. Then a year and a half later the pandemic meant we were all wearing them anyway. Funny how life turns out, in'nit?  

Pictures of me, pictures of you

A while ago someone asked me why there are no photos of me on this blog (there actually are, but you'll have to hunt around to find them). This is an art blog, anyway – so how about some drawings of me? There aren't that many in my archives, but here are some for you to look at. It's always interesting how someone else renders you in artistic form – regardless of their artistic ability!

This one was by Mladen, an accomplished illustrator. He drew it in 2014 at either the first or second monthly comics meetup in Melbourne that I attended. If I remember right, although he was sitting opposite me, he had a basketball player in mind when drawing this! He drew it in ink on textured watercolour paper and was kind enough to give me the drawing when he was finished.

A Japanese girl called Miho drew this one, in 2002. While living and teaching in Japan, as someone of a different culture I was probably drawn a bit differently than the way Japanese high school students usually drew their friends and other people. In this case, with a purposeful stride, schoolbooks under my arm, shoujo manga-esque eyes, and noodle arms and legs! That's me all right.

Another one drawn by a Japanese student, a girl named Mami. Like Miho's drawing above, it was drawn in the corner of a bit of schoolwork. I wonder if these girls drew little caricatures of the other teachers who'd be marking their work?

This was drawn by my 4 year old niece, Aanya. It's a drawing of her, her mum/my sister, and me. You might think the big person in the middle is me, right? Wrong. I am reliably informed that the smallest person, the one on the right with a single long strand of hair, is in fact me. Like most young kids learning to draw faces and bodies, Aanya is used to giving hair to every head. Perhaps she felt sorry for me so she gave me a single long strand instead.

It's another drawing of me looking vaguely dissatisfied (my default expression, it seems), done by Daniel, an attendee of the monthly PCAF comics workshops in Perth, in 2024. As you can see he used magenta and yellow graphic markers to do it and he told me that those are not 'stink lines' above my head, but frustration or worry lines. I tend to make the same facial expression as the character I'm drawing so I can only assume I was drawing a worried face at the time.

Back in 2008 another guy called Daniel did this drawing in Illustrator, depicting him, me, and two of our graphic design classmates, based on Jeremy Plumb's cover of Blur's best-of album, called, oddly enough, Blur: The Best Of. This image looks dodgy because it's a scan of a printout – I don't have the source file for this one.

See that yellow face? According to my cousin Gabby, that's supposed to be me. She drew this when she was 7, and is now 31 (and probably still draws like this). Okay, maybe not.

Another drawing done by one of my students in Japan many years ago, named Ikki. That's him looking in from the right. I'm the one at the bottom left, and I have to say, even though he nailed the caricatures of his mates Shingo and Takahira-kun, he's depicted me in a rather unusual way, complete with blonde hair. I was actually thinking of making this my online profile picture! But that would be silly.

Erica

 
Erica is a character in my graphic novel series, Airbury Academy (2007-2018). She first appeared in 2001 as an extremely minor background character, with only one line of dialogue, in a sci-fi/comedy comic called Metalheads that I drew when I was a uni student. There were eight issues made between 1998 and 2003. The bulk of the Airbury characters all first appeared in Metalheads, as did the character Miss Fox from Juliet Prime.

When Erica next appeared, in the original (online) version of Airbury Academy Volume I in 2007, she had been promoted to main character Psyche's best friend. This was a decision taken by my friend Sue (RIP), who had a hand in writing a couple of stories in it. Sue's justification was that her childhood friend was named Erica and she liked my character design. Well, why not?

Erica appeared throughout the entire series. She had a cameo at the end of Limelight in 2021, and is set to appear (along with about 75% of the Airbury characters) in a new murder-mystery graphic novel later this decade. So look out for it! Until then, enjoy some panels...

Fifteen years!

Can you believe it, this blog has been going for 15 years now! And what better way to mark the occasion than a massive artwork dump. Incidentally, I went to the massive artwork dump the other day, and I highly recommend it, if you want to see seagulls pecking at the remains of mouldering old paintings that are long past their cultural relevance. It's just past Hill House on Route 41. You can't miss it.

For the last 28 years, my friend Dave and I have been doing a series of weekly drawings where we produce a drawing on an improvised theme. Here are some of mine, which have all been done in 2025 (seeing as how this is my first post for the year). I'll explain what the theme of each one was if you really must know.

Unconventional ways to celebrate New Year. If you're going to try this, at least wear goggles.

"The Tomb in the Sea" came out of a title generator, I think. The artwork was required to be round. I combined elements from two Tintin books: the cover of The Red Sea Sharks and the floating sarcophagi of Cigars Of The Pharaoh. Yes, that is Cap'n Haddock's First Mate, Allan.

I can't remember what the theme for this was. DO NOT look up "corset willy". Just don't, OK?

Hey, what if Phil Collins wrote a book? What would it be about? What would the cover look like?
Why Phil Collins, you ask? His name was picked at random from one of my compilation CDs. It could've easily been Cher. But I'm glad it wasn't.

Creepy mascot for an abandoned amusement park.

I've always liked that Shadow Of The Beast-style fantasy art from late '80s/early '90s video games. Not the women in chainmail bikinis, that's quite naff — but the wizards, castle towers and dungeons and things like that. This is Ace, Dave's character. And where else to put him but high above the clouds in a castle tower. Because that seems like the sort of place he'd go. Well, I think so anyway.

This one was inspired by The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, a 12th century book of poetry. ('Rubáiyát' means 'quatrains', because all verses in the book take this form.) The English translation first appeared in 1859, and although it is only a translation, it brings vivid visual images to life. This is my sorry attempt to capture it. Okay, I'll do better next time, no need to worry.

And one more, for now. A well-known character (Martin Handford's Wally), but stretched and distorted. I took some visual cues from the Garbage Pail Kids on this one.

 

I'll most likely post some more drawings later on in the year. Keep checking back, if you feel like it! Or you could also see my Instagram, @airbury. Some of these end up there as well. Or you could do neither. Up to you.