I Don’t Think You’re Ready for this Jelly.

I was going to title this post “Goodbye Cali-prawn-ia, Hello Octstralia!”, but as I’m not moving back to Sydney for another 5 weeks, I thought I’d keep it classic – plus, I’m going to a Prom themed party tonight, and I’m expecting to hear a ton of Destiny’s Child.

I just got back from a night at Dillon Beach, NorCal, where I squeezed in a little sea gazing accompanied by some highly relevant ocean-themed watercolour painting. After all, I had a new self-watering brush I wanted to try out which I used for the jellyfish and the octopus. It was a little limiting, and the thing I love about watercolours is their flexibility… So I put it aside and grabbed a normal brush to add some movement to the octopus.

Then, something magical happened in about 15 seconds. And that magical thing, was a prawn.

Really pleased with the prawn.

Also, can’t wait to chuck a coupla prawns on the barbie in 5 weeks! Oi oi oi!

Octopus in a hurry

Jelly (audience favorite)

Stoked on my prawn

From the Vault: Guts and Gears

When I first met Klaus back in Los Angeles circa February 2012, he was working… wait… “working” for a small (and magnificent) wakeboarding company called Humanoid with his good mate, and company owner Jeff. Their days consisted of “testing products” on the boat (which I would try to involve myself with as regularly as my “work” schedule would permit), building mini ramps for “brand culture” purposes, and occasionally shipping out wakeboards when people ordered them from the website.

Jeff had a vision for a board design – an abstract interpretation of the humanoid word itself.

The brief went something like this:

“Claudo, I just want it to be a shitload of bloody guts and brains and severed body parts, smashed together with greasy, oily boat engine parts.”

Can do.

These were hand sketches that I then threw into Illustrator to schmick up a bit.

Turns out the company was moving in a more tasteful design direction so this never went into production. Can’t imagine why…? … Guys? Your brand slogan written out of guts in cursive? No?

Boobs and Bridges

Talk about Northern exposure… Or NorCal exposure…

Slap your eyeballs all over the poster for my feature film directorial debut, “Frisky” (director/writer/producer).

Frisky is a comedy feature film about two twenty-somethings who move to San Francisco to chase their career, but end up chasing tail instead.

Very high brow stuff, as the poster implies.

The film is a patchwork of my own experiences (or things I witnessed others doing) throughout my move from Sydney to Los Angeles for film school in 2009, then again to shoot a pilot in 2011, then for love from LA to San Francisco in 2013. Only it’s just one story. And it’s heaps good. For serious. And the writing. Also good. Like this paragraph. But seriously, it’s going to be a ripper of a film, so stay tuned for more very shortly.

As for the poster, The finished product holds true to the original concept sketch that I drew on the back of a script to pitch the idea to Christiana, the film’s cinematographer/DP and the poster’s photographer. I then fiddled for more time than what is reasonable with the graphic design in Photoshop to produce this beauty!

concept sketch on someone else’s script

concept sketch on my script

alternative style

We’re hella legit. Even IMDb reckons so... So keep an eye on our Facebook Page for the San Francisco screening in late March 2015.

Postal Party!

So legends keep doing nice stuff for me and special occasions keep popping up so I keep on posting out the personalised greeting cards! Here’s the latest crop…. I hope everyone had a very merry Christmoose.

thank you

birthday

thank you

30th birthday

wedding

christmas

valentine’s day

Great Willy Wonka Wall of China Town

Just on the edge of China Town in San Fantastic-rancisco is a tech co-op space called The Vault. It’s underground, it’s full of computer-bound entrepreneurs, and it’s on the old site of the famous Ghirardelli chocolate factory (circa 1863). That’s right, this one’s an antique.

As nobody in the space seemed to have the foggiest idea of the place’s historical significance, the community manager (SO MANY STARTUP WORDS) decided an old advertisement for the chocolate factory would be the perfect fit for the reception area’s mural. Only problem was that I’d never actually done any text on a mural – ever… And as this was more of a ‘replicate and exaggerate’ sort of job, I needed to be a little more planned/precise/particular about how I would get this thing up on a wall, rather than just freestyling it as I usually do. It was also to be on a grey wall and using only black paint, unlike my standard bright colours – so I managed to pull the ‘artist’ card and bargain a bit of gold into the equation too.

The whole thing was rather a trendy sounding idea.

So I did a bit of photoshop work to see how it could be placed, fused the advertisement with some doodles from an old Ghirardelli sign that I liked, projected it on the wall, slapped some masking tape on the straight line edges, and got hectic with the black paint. When I say hectic, I mean as precise as possible. (Neck pain for days. I’m fine now though, thanks Klaus for the amateur chiropractic work.)

I did have to take some liberties with the text as the blocky resolution of the projector proved to be only adequate for a rough guide. Anyway, once it was all done, I had intended on gold leafing just the shadow of the heading (as planned, and shown in red on the projection). Needless to say, that freestyling side of me came out in the eleventh hour, and significantly more gold leaf ended up getting chucked on the wall. Which I’m stoked about, because not only does gold leaf look like Willy Wonka’s golden ticket, it is also just basically extremely epic.

I have been breathing out gold leaf dust flecks ever since, like a mythical creature. Note to future users of gold leaf: probably wear a respiratory filter unless you plan to attend some sort of dungeons and dragons convention every day for the rest of your life.

Original advertisement

Sign with doodles I liked

Fused together and shadow added

Existing reception space

Photoshopped to see design in the reception space

projected into the space

Taped up straight lines

All black everything aka murdered out mural

Gold as planned

Gold not as planned

dangly gold floating in the air!

gold

gold!

GOLD!

GOOOOLD!!

mural illustration

Burn, baby, burn.

I had not planned to attend Burning Man this year, although I’d considered it and ruled it out. So in a massive yes-man move, I accepted my architecture client’s offer of a ticket on the Saturday (as he was the only person I really needed to work for that week) and drove out with a 16-year veteran (nice to meet you Glenn!) and my megapal Katie (who took the above photo) late on Sunday night.

I won’t go into the whole thing too much, but suffice to say that I had the opportunity to play the flute for a herd of cows on the way out to Black Rock City (life highlight) and the week maintained that standard of epicness throughout.

After painting several people and items of furniture (clearly all of which were ill-documented), I noticed a mate in my camp, Rowan, assembling a cart to pull some speakers behind his bicycle for that night. All the time in the world on my hands at that point, I offered to paint it. Playa landscape inspired.

In the spirit of what is truly an inspiring festival of fleeting art, it only felt right for the work to be completely transformed by the environment, come morning. What I’m trying to say is that it was completely buggered, but that was cool.

started off like this

left the camp looking like this (plus speakers, etc)

then it spent the night/morning in this…

ended up like this

and gave me the artistic satisfaction of this

Oh Snap!

Oh snap! It’s my brand-spanking-new photography website! And it has a clever wordplay in the URL just like the title of this blog post… What a treat!

Feast your eyes upon www.claudiapic.com

Here’s my pitch:

Do you have an appalling LinkedIn profile pic of you draping yourself over a work colleague (tastefully cropped out) in a shiny paper party hat while clinging onto a glass dirtied with the remnants of a piña colada? Call me for a headshot.

Are you a brilliant actor, singer or dancer who has been photographically jibbed up until now? Does your agent constantly say “For the love of all things holy, Susan! Get a decent gosh darn headshot instead of this headsh*t!”? Call me for a headshot session, Susan.

Do you own, or have designed a house or building that deserves to be immortalised and publicised? A structure that demands documentation, so that it may finally bathe with its peers in the lofty glory that only the architectural works of Rem, Zaha and Frank have known until now? Call me for shoot.

Does your pet blow your mind? Ever wondered why none of your friends can see why? Put an end to all those underwhelming ‘doesn’t-do-fluffy’s-good-looks-any-justice‘ images that you keep posting online: The ones with the ill-placed shadows and out-of-focus stares. Stop being a tightass and invest in what you love. You need to call me.

Do you have a rock on your finger that’s weighing down your hand like your inability to decide on a sensational wedding photographer is weighing on your conscience? Call me, and let’s do this romance thing right.

Call me Claudia, call me Claud, call me Thedarclaud, call me whatever you like… just make sure you call me. Actually, it’s just email listed on the site, so do that. It’s the 21st century for heaven’s sake.

P.S. Can you believe the freaking Golden Gate Bridge shot with the bird?! That thing is straight-off-the-camera, no editing, right-place-right-time, mother-nature-meets-engineering-masterpiece, pure photographic glory. I may never take a better photo than it in my life. Fact.

Marmot Matrimony

The RULES? I cast them aside!

So when my Californian wilderness enthusiast pals Casey and Allie were getting married this month, I decided to boycott the wedding registry and draw them a couple of marmots instead.

Have You Been Working Out?

… ‘Cause you’re looking buff!

(CLASSIC GAG.)

The portable piece to match the Flatiron mural is complete! The background is an abstraction of a section of the Colorado Rocky Mountains, and creeping in from the left there is an American Buffalo/Bison. The ‘canvas’ is birch wood (takes me back to my architecture university days of model making!), so it took a little bit of extra priming. Big ups to Klaus who collaborated with the taping, geometries and colour advisory… And also helped me with the opening gag for this post.

Let it be known that the proceeds of this work is directly funding the software with which I’m writing my next screenplay. Literally, art for art’s sake. It’s like that movie ‘the human centipede’ – except without all the people dying. Maybe it’s more like an arty ecosystem. I think I should buy a felt hat. Or grow out my armpit hair.

Did I mention the house this work is for is in an area called Cow Hollow? Bovine coincidence? I think not.

Wait! I’ve got one more:

Q. What did the buffalo say when his son left for school?

A. Bison.

Gold.

Prime then tape. This project clearly took priority over the screenplay I’m mapping out on those system cards underneath the plastic!

All taped up

Block paint

Sponge for texture

Pull the tape! (Best bit)

Wood lines, paint lines…

Nice little wrap around

Pre-bison

Bison begins

Growing…

Grooooowing…..

Bison! And a golden little rising moon.

Painty Pointy Precipice

I was commissioned to paint this mural for a house in Cow Hollow. The request was for the image of a Bison as a tribute to Boulder, Colorado (and which I also thought was appropriate considering the mural’s location).

Enlisting Klaus, we set about taping up and painting an abstract version of the Flatirons rock formation for the background. I then-

Nope. No, I then did nothing else.

I intended on drawing a giant Bison on this chunk of dining room wall, but never got the chance. It seems our patron was so pleased with the work, that he wanted us to leave it as-is, and paint him a separate artwork that is in keeping with the theme, but one that he can also take with him when he moves out of the house one day. How good is that? Keep ’em peeled for part 2!