PURVIS ILLUSTRATION & DESIGN
agIdeas: I won a Scholarship to meet Ree Treweek
May 18th, 2012 | Purvis
This will be my third year in a row attending agIdeas, a weeklong creative and design conference that is at once both exhausting and invigorating, where friendships and partnerships are forged and strengthened and minds are completely blown—sitting inside a large hall for 9 hours a day becomes something to look forward to.
agIdeas delves deep into the creative industry, providing a huge cross-section of people from architecture, illustration, advertising, print design, photography, art, fashion, and any other industry that might inject white-hot ideas into unprepared minds.
Even more exciting, I was also awarded a scholarship from AGDA (Australian Graphic Designers Association) to attend a day-long workshop with South African illustrator Ree Treweek, member of the creative studio The Blackheart Gang. The Blackheart Gang are responsible for some of the craziest narrative animations and extraordinarily captivating advertising projects I’ve seen recently. Please watch ‘The Tale of How‘ above for an example of just how bent my mind should be come Monday afternoon:
I should also offer my congratulations to Ben Stevens, who has been short-listed for the agIdeas NewStart Award for his brilliant design work!
See you Monday, Melbourne creatives!
And here’s some highlights from previous agIdeas events:
With my talented peer Ben Keynes and genius Theo Jansen, dancing up a storm at Cherry Bomb.
Rocking fashionable hobo-chic down by the Yarra with Mel and Eli.
Carrying the heavy annual agIdeas design book around everywhere on the first day. Seriously, those things are monstrous.
Sketchbook: SPIRAL0024 C-17 transport studies 1
May 9th, 2012 | Purvis
For those who might be wondering what the SPIRAL0024 stands for in the title, I code all my sketchbooks with masking tape in order to keep track of my scans and their origins. If you visit the Sketchbook category, for instance, you’ll find MSW and MS codes which represent Mole Skin Watercolour and Mole Skin, respectively. DIGI codes are for content that was created as an experiment on the computer. Like I said, just in case you were wondering.
Photography: Nixon ‘The Platform’ watch
May 1st, 2012 | Purvis
When mum was lucky enough to win Jucy’s second major competition (you may remember that, by some strange tide of luck, I won their first major competition) she allocated a portion of her prize to my brother and I. This consisted of a sum of vouchers to be redeemed at a surf clothing store. There is only one artefact that I feel the urge to possess, the Oakley’s AP Backpack 3.0, which is unfortunately unavailable in Australia at any store where the vouchers are redeemable.
A watch was suggested as a lasting alternative. Both mum and my brother had purchased a new Nixon watch using their allocation and, for the first time, I could see the style and value in owning a lovely timepiece. After spending a half hour searching through all the watches available, trying on various sizes and weighing up the aesthetics of gun metal grey versus stainless steel, this was my choice: ‘The Platform’ watch by Nixon.
Call me old-fashioned—I like to feel the weight of an expensive item, there is something about knowing in the physicality of an object that it will survive a hard hit. The Platform has that feeling. Weighty, solid, crisp, clean and rugged. It sits flat against my wrist and I am, having not worn a watch since I was 12, already becoming used to it’s presence, and I feel more masculine, more confident. I rarely find myself in possession of items that hold me captivated and I’m excited to find one that will quickly become inseparable.
Illustration: ‘Poison’ for Kill Screen
April 28th, 2012 | Purvis
Tough, kinky and exuding sexuality, and packing more than you’d expect, Poison is one heck of a transgender goddess. Yet, there are still many issues that surround her identity.
Check out Jason Johnson’s ‘Poisonous Paragraphs’ at Kill Screen Daily.
Illustration: ‘Public Potty’ in Hyper #224
April 26th, 2012 | Purvis
In Hyper #224 (in store now), Daniel Golding deliberates on the implications posed by institutions such as art galleries making videogames, which are generally played alone in the privacy of ones own home, are relocated to public spaces. Do people judge us when we shoot a terrorist in Call of Duty? Do we feel judged for the acts we so easily perform at home?
This was an extremely enjoyable image to create. In part, I lost myself in it and freed myself from the expectation that I must draw everything—this is something I began to experiment with in Hyper #223. No doubt, there shall be more of it in the future. Also, it looks gorgeous in print!
Big thanks to mum and dad, my brother Hugh and pup Leo, and Jessica Citizen for your help. Michael Atkinson, it would seem your legacy lives on…
Illustration: ‘Call of Director’ for Kill Screen
April 24th, 2012 | Purvis
In Brendan Keogh’s latest Split Screen feature ’The War Must Go On’, he argues that videogames like Call of Duty are crafted in a manner that resembles a film, forcing the player to become an actor as the developer turns director. It’s a great piece and worth the read.
This illustration was actually completed a few months ago and I had thought it might have passed into the ether. But lo, it has been reborn!
Illustration: ‘The Edible History of Games’ for Kill Screen
April 24th, 2012 | Purvis
Jon Irwin contributes a rather off-beat yet on-point article, ‘The Edible History of Games’, relating the various cultural tastes in food for each decade since the 1980s with reference to the videogame industry of those periods—1980s obsession with Asian fusion and the arcade market, 90s obsession with gastronomical extremes and the power of the console generation, the oughties return to home-grown gardens and DIY videogames, then the current American food-cart craze and the nature of indie gaming.
I contributed four spot illustrations for this piece, with a quick 24 hour turnaround. Please visit the article to catch the rest.
Illustration: Collaboration with David Calvo
April 23rd, 2012 | Purvis
I’m a little behind in calling out a bunch of work I’ve done for Kill Screen et al, so in the next few days there’ll be a little tirade of posts. Please bear with me.
The first and most exciting piece was done in collaboration with a wonderful French illustrator, David Calvo, for the Kill Screen article ‘Playing Tricks’.
Calvo’s whimsical linework defines rich narratives with a childlike playfulness. After seeing a number of his illustrations for Kill Screen, I contacted him and proposed a collaboration: If he supplied the artwork, I’d become the colourist.
Considering he lives a good few thousand kilometres away in a distant land, collaborating is relatively easy. David sends his completed pieces to me via email, as black and white print-resolution documents, and I have them printed to watercolour paper so that I may paint them.
We’ve another piece or two in the works and it’ll be a pleasure to release them when they’re completed.
In the mean time, please see David Calvo’s blog http://songsofbeulah.com for delight.
Photography: Slingshot in the Park
April 19th, 2012 | Purvis
The Book
Our last day at the coast was too nice to spend indoors so we took the time to soak up the atmosphere and explore the surrounds (though not before Paul had the opportunity to read Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea). We found a typical slice of Australiana and it’s prefab housing, with empty and unsold blocks of land covered in nothing but burrs and fence posts. A slingshot was conjured from Paul’s small bag of supplies, along with the appropriate soft-lead bearings required to ensure there was no damage to surrounding property. Fence-posts were lined with empty vino bottles from the previous night and we spent a short-time learning how difficult it is to aim a slingshot with any semblance of accuracy. Paul and I managed to nail our technique, and Todd would have had the opportunity for some more practice if a woman 200 metres away hadn’t seen fit to inform us through screech that we were “on private property,” as though we cared. Shortly after, we packed the car and headed back to Adelaide, where Todd and I ate some fantastic laksa from the Laksa House in the Central Markets. A lonely noodle-maiden looked on as we said our goodbyes.
Please note that slingshots are legal in South Australia, provided they do not have a wrist mount, which ours did not.
The House Next Door
The Target
The Slingshot 1
The Slingshot 2
The Girl