A sneak peek of one of my recent drawings which I completed last week.

Since my last post I have been occupied searching for a suitable space to relocate the studio (no luck yet), sustained injury, stepped back in time with a tedious dose of slow “capped” internet, melted some solder and laid down a decent amount of carbon graphite polymer with my trusty mechanical pencil.

The recent completed drawings are starting to pile up around here and I must say I am extremely pleased with how they are turning out, very pleased indeed! Would love to show you a few but my current scanner is being a tad temperamental at present, seems I am in need of a new scanner. Does anyone have a working Epson 10000XL laying around they are keen to dispose off?

One of the quickly scribbled, crude sketches from the planing stages of the most recent drawing…

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!!

Furby Babies before skinning…

I have been collecting and skinning both Tiger Electronics‘ standard Furbies and Furby Babies. The collecting part has almost become some kind of strange obsession, resulting in Furby furs and carcasses now littering my entire studio… Once circuit bent, these guys are capable of all sorts of crazy glitch and drone sounds.

Skinned Furby Babies!

“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

“In the eyes of nature”, Oil on board, 38 x 35 cm

“Natural descent”, Oil on board, 58 x 50 cm

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…

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 favorites:

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…

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

Stay tuned!!

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