Santa Claus – Public Health Pariah?

Well, there's been a bit of a ruckus.

I recently did a couple of illustrations published by the British Medical Journal accompanying the article 'Santa Claus: a public health pariah?' by Nathan Grills.

It turns out the article has gotten picked up by news services all over the world, sadly often with sensationalised reporting that ignores the fact the article was a light-hearted tounge-in-cheek poke at Santa.

Well, i thought i'd post the two images here with a link to an extract of the article. Sadly you can't view the full article online unless you are a bmj subscriber.

www.brendanhalyday.com Updated

I have recently updated my website and urge you all to check it out. I have added lots of more recent illustrations, designs and comic pages for you to enjoy.

The Garbage Truck Failures is in stores now!

I'm excited to announce that The Garbage Truck Failures is in stores now and costs a mere four dollars. You couldn't buy a sandwich for that kind of pocket change, but you can buy an awesome zine with illustrations and design by me, words by James Andre and an awesome cover by Bobby N.

You can buy it from any of these fine establishments:

• Sticky Institute, Degraves St subway (under flinders st station), Melbourne CBD.
• Minotaur, 121 Elizabeth St, Melbourne CBD.
• Missing Link Records, Basement 405 Bourke St, Melbourne CBD
  
• Alternate Worlds, 76 Chapel St,Windsor
• Polyester Books, 330 Brunswick St Fitzroy
• Brunswick Bound, 361 Sydney Rd, Brunswick
• 696 Gallery, 696 Sydney Rd, Brunswick
• Evil Empire Comics, Sydney Rd, Coburg

We extend our thanks to these stores for carrying our book and we heartily recommend all these fine retailers to you.

Alternatively, you can order The Garbage Truck Failures online at my Etsy store and have it delivered to your doorstep.

If anyone knows of any stores outside of Melbourne interested in carrying The Garbage Truck Failures, please let me know.

A little bit darker

I've been toying with a darker drawing style for a little while now and the pieces i haver done seem to be well received, so here is a peek at some of my favourites. I've also been playing around with incorporating a bit of sampled textures and collage into my work and am enjoying the results. As always, i welcome your feedback and constructive criticism.



This piece is a screenprint onto textured paper that has been manipulated digitally. The final piece is from a zine i did with up and coming Melbourne-based writer James Andre. You can check out his work here.

News

Just a quick update to let you know the wonderfully talented artist/illustrator Kristina Sostarko has done a feature on my work on her blog. Check it out at http://inaluxe.blogspot.com/ and while you're at it, pop by her web store and buy something cool! www.inaluxe.etsy.com

Oh, and here is a new piece I have done...

New work

So I've been absent from the blog landscape for a little while, but i am back now with a bunch of new work to show off. I welcome your comments, I'd especially like suggestions of which of these new pieces yould be introduced to my online gallery at www.brendanhalyday.com



This piece is based on Rapunzel by the brothers Grimm. Its a digital painting in photoshop using a wacom. Its ok but it took sooo long and honestly i think it would have turned out better had i just painted it.




The brief for this piece was to do an ad for an online dating service based on the tagline 'On the prowl'. I did a lot of roughs before settling on this one.



I also tried a B&W version of this image with the love heart in red. I am still divided on which one i like best.



This is an update of a poster i did for the band The Submarines. I really like it!

www.brendanhalyday.com goes live, blog gets a makeover

I'm excited to have my website www.brendanhalyday.com go live. Click to check it out, be sure to let me know what you think. I've also given this blog site a bit of a makeover to be consistent with the design of the new website, and the new business cards. While i've been absent from the blog landscape for a little while, i haven't stopped working, and have some interesting new pieces to show off.

The first is ecological footprint painting



The second is the cover to my new comic Graphic Narrative which i am planning to release at Supanova Sydney at the end of June (fingers crossed).




There is so much more i could show you, but instead keep checking out my website for all the latest

The Target 144 Challenge

The Target 144 Challenge is to make a comic or zine from start to finish in 144 hours. It's an interesting twist on the time-limited comic/zine creation challenge, having six days rather than the traditional 24 hours certainly raises the bar in terms of the quality expected.

I arrived at sticky institute just after 12pm to start work only to find several zine-sters already hard at work on their new zines. I was reading Scott Pilgrim vol. 5 on the tram into the city, and it's zanyness really seeped into the first couple of pages of the comic. The other influence to my comic at this stage is Paul Hornschemeier, and in particular, his book The Three Paradoxes. Another small influence would be local artist Ive Sorocuk's Awesomenesss comics.

I wanted the comic to be a vehicle to express and work through some of the issues in my own life. There is a sense in which the work is an allegory. A little too thinly veiled at times i fear.

So many little things impacted on the comic. things as small as working on cut down a5 paper rather than drawing two pages on an a4, relaxed inhibitions and allowed my to add, subtract and move around pages as i like. I am finding it difficult to resist the urge to redraw the pages with full bleed and replaced text balloons, as i often put them too close to the edge on the A5 sheet.

Hopefully the project will turn out and be finished in time to print, so i can sell it at the zine fair on sunday. I'll post again once i'm further into the project (or finished) wit an update.

Summer reading

I've been doing quite a bit of reading lately.

It all started with The Three Paradoxes by Paul Hornschemeier, published by Fantagraphics. When i first read Hornschemieier's stuff, i really didn't get him at all. It was a copy of forlorn funnies, number 5 i think which i had picked up at a sale at Alternate Worlds for like five bucks. it seemed kind or surreal and existential. fast forward a couple of years and i've become quite a fan. I dont quite know where or when me opinions of hornschemieir changed, but i have recently read several of his works and found them compelling. it helps of course that his drawing and colouring is exceptional, but it is my maturing that is leading me to view his storytelling in a different way.

It has really coincided with my rapidly diminishing interest in superhero and other mainstream comics for more indie, slice of life and drama comics.

But The Three Paradoxes was just the beginning of my summer reading. Floored by it, i grabbed the next Hornschmeier book off my shelf, Mother Come Home. It was published about 5 years ago and is widely regarded as Hornschmeier's break-out book, and with good cause. A moving story about a father and son as they struggle to cope with the loss of their wife and mother.

The last book of merit i have read is Dash Shaw's Bottomless Belly button, published by Fantagraphics. You could be excused for misaking this book for a brick because, at almost 700 pages, it is indeed a hefty tome. This book proves that decompression can work for indie comics just as well as it works for superhero comics, telling a compelling tale of a family in shock after their parents announced their divorce after 40 years of marriage.

After all this reading, i feel like making some comics of my own...

SKetchbook 3 out now!

Well, after a lot of hard work and late nights, the latest edition of sketchbook is finished and now available. You can pick it up at sticky or polyester now, and it will be in a few more shops around melbourne (like minotaur, brunswick bound, and others) when i get around to dropping copies into them. Or you can buy it online from brendanhalyday.etsy.com


This is the first sketchbook to include bona fide comic strips as well as illustrations, musings and sketches. I'm pretty happy with it and i am planning to do lots more comics in the next issue. I am also thinking about doing longer comic stories and maybe even serializing stories over several issues.

I had a launch party for this edition just before christmas on Friday 19 December. It was modestly attended, but the group of people that came were really great and it had a really fun, open vibe and everyone seemed to mingle well. The only downside is that a couple of people got lost trying to find the place, so i think next time i will print a map on the invites :P