Jan 8 2010

I now declare the Grandpa Studios online store officially open!

Grandpa Studios online shop now open!

As a few of you have noticed the “shop” section of this site has been open for business the last week or so. Rather than continuing to operate in stealth mode, I decided to make an official announcement and cut the celebratory red ribbon with my giant scissors.

There is a new series of prints in the works, planned for possible release later in the year…

Stay tuned!!


Sep 26 2009

Toolbox

Grandpa Shea's drawing kit

This is my current kit: cheap plastic 0.5mm side-click mechanical pencil and three (the third is stuck to my index finger) erasers. Also, I’m pleased to say the new drawings are coming along quite nicely… You might be able to just make one out in the background.


Sep 15 2009

Heidi Yardley presents
“Light Possession”

Heidi Yardley 'The end is near'
“The end is near”, Oil on Board, 23 x 38 cm

Having been following Melbourne artist Heidi Yardley‘s work since viewing her amazing drawings late last century, I was quite excited upon hearing she has a new exhibition of oil paintings opening at the end of the month. The show will run from September 30th to October 17th at Scott Livesey Galleries (located Armadale, Victoria), with the opening night celebrations being held on Wednesday October 7th between the hours of 6 and 8pm. If you can’t wait till the 30th though, head over to the gallery’s website for a preview. I highly recommend everyone get themselves over to the show once it opens!

Heidi Yardley – “Light Possession”
September 30th to October 17th
Opening night 6-8pm Wednesday October 7th
Scott Livesey Galleries
909a High Street, Armadale, Victoria, Australia, 3143

Heidi Yardley 'In the eyes of nature'
“In the eyes of nature”, Oil on board, 38 x 35 cm
Heidi Yardley 'Natural descent'
“Natural descent”, Oil on board, 58 x 50 cm

Aug 8 2009

In Progress

unfinished drawing of a tattooed girl

Currently occupying my drawing desk in this unfinished state, is the above rough outline from my tattoo themed series. If it wasn’t for battling evil and dishonest thieves who disguise themselves as a webhost (the treacherous Solidinternet) and Mr Bill Gates with his horrible IE series of browsers, which are notoriously full of CSS bugs, it would probably be finished by now…


Jul 30 2009

Distractions…

Just a small sample of my toys...

Howdy, I have been a bit of a ghost round these parts lately and thought you may like to know why. One of the many reasons is I have been buried in collecting equipment and parts to modify and “circuit bend“. Circuit bending is basically the art of short circuiting. You open up toys, music equipment, anything that makes a sound really (although I wouldn’t advise people to go poking around AC powered devices) and add switches, resistors, capacitors, cut trace lines and feed the electrons through alternate paths on the board to change the sound. Here is a closer look at some of my favourites:

Casio’s famous SK1 keyboard. I actually own two of these and am pretty excited about bending both of them. I’ve been hard at work carefully planing everything I will do to their insides and outsides…

Just a small sample of my toys...

Synsonics – Mattel’s analog drum machine. I’m adding sound controls and will re-case the whole unit.

Just a small sample of my toys...

Children’s voice changer megaphone. I bent this a while back but since then it has suffered a fall. I should probably re-case it, as gaffer-tape ghetto is not really the look I am going for. I have a few more circuit tweaks planned for it too.

Just a small sample of my toys...

Yamaha RX-17 drum machine. Going to add a modular style banana plug patch bay to this one.

Just a small sample of my toys...

Toy piano with a piezo pick-up I added. The pick-up was installed years ago. Since then I have collected a few more that will get the same treatment and maybe tone controls as well.

Just a small sample of my toys...

You may be pleased to hear that I have also been working on some new drawings…


Jun 23 2009

Badge Making Fun!

I am making badges!

The designs are almost finished. These badges should be making their way into the online shop quite soon…

I am making badges!

Stay tuned!!


Jun 22 2009

New Grandpa Shea Facebook Page

Become a fan of the Grandpa Studios Facebook page!!

Yes, I recently created a Facebook page for those of you who are into that sort of thing.


Jun 21 2009

Grandpa Studios V3 Test Site Is Live!!!

Grandpa Studios Dot Com's new enter page

After much work, Grandpa Studios V3 is finally ready enough to receive a decent general public live testing! Everything seems to be running reasonably stable in Firefox and Safari… Still working on a few abnormalities with every web developers favorite browser; Internet Explorer. Arrgh, I really can’t imagine why anyone would run this browser out of choice with free code like Firefox floating around begging for you to download and install.

If while navigating through the new site you manage to find anything askew, it really would be quite handy if you let me know. Browser details and a screenshot (if it is something visual) would be a plus!

Just a note: the shop is currently only stocked with fake items for testing purposes. You are however more than welcome to buy the nonexistent items listed. I’ll happily take your money and spend it wisely, just don’t expect anything to arrive in the mail.

I really should be spending less time coding and editing images and more time drawing