A series of illustrations commissioned by Men’s Health for a feature on home DIY tricks (the irony that I’m somewhat limited in the home handyman department was not lost.) Thankfully with some great copy by Denny Watkins I was able to complete the three illos below.

1) Remove the base of a smashed lightbulb: Make sure the lamp is unplugged or, if it’s hardwired, flip off the circuit breaker. Clean off the bigger shards from the base, then press the cut side of a half potato down on it. Turn counter-clockwise.
2) Stop a toilet from overflowing: Take the lid off the water tank and lift the rubber ball to shut the inflow valve to the bowl.
3) De-stink your fridge: Place an open bowl of ground coffee on the bottom shelf. Within a week, the coffee will absorb all of the foul odours – and leave behind the far-more pleasing aroma of extra-strong espresso.

The process of stitching body tissue together hasn’t changed much over the last thousand-odd years. Thankfully we no longer use animal materials (hair, tendons, arteries, muscle strips, silk, catgut) or plant materials (flax, hemp and cotton). These days most sutures are made of nicely sterile synthetic polymer fibers.

Whatever material you’re using, hopefully you also have some anaesthetic for the patient.

These illustrations were commissioned by Australian Men’s Fitness magazine.

Feel the burn! A series of gym exercise illustrations for Australian FHM magazine.

These illustrations were for an Australian Men’s Fitness feature story on ‘recovery’.

June is a winter month in the southern hemisphere, so illustration 1 suggests methods of dealing with a cold or flu.

Illustration 2, well, I’ll leave that up to your imagination…

Everyone loves a good magic trick, but the world can be divided into people who want to know how the trick was performed, or those who’d rather be blissfully unaware of the mechanics behind the illusion.

I’m in the former camp (most of the time anyway), so I was more than happy to help out Australian Men’s Fitness with this illustration explaining the art of spoon bending.

The title of this post comes from a wonderful EP by an Australian band called Sidewinder. They formed in my home town of Canberra and recorded two seriously brilliant albums before tragically breaking up in 1999. Their second album Tangerine was a precursor (and in my opinion better album) to Tame Impala‘s psychedelic rock album Innerspeaker, which was voted #19 in Triple J’s Hottest 100 Australian Albums of All Time. Go figure.

And not that I’m biased or anything, but the guitarist’s brother was my maths teacher in high school (hi Mr Branson!)

As anyone who sits at a desk all day knows (myself included), lower back pain is always hovering in the background like an annoying boss.

This illustration for Australian Men’s Fitness shows how to stretch those all important hip flexors to reduce the risk of lower back pain.

Commissioned for Shape magazine Australia. these illustrations show a women’s fitness workout that can be done at home.

The brief was for a more suggestive illustration style, and I really like the effect of the looser line-work. It somehow feels a bit ‘friendlier’ than a lot of my more technical fitness illustrations.

I enjoyed sketching this eyebrow-trimming illustration for Shape magazine in Australia. It was nice to work with tone and shading as opposed to the hard line work of my other recent illustrations.

The pencil effect was achieved using Art Rage, a wonderful drawing/painting program recommended to me by Sydney artist Tony Johansen. You can download a demo version or the program here.

Another fun job for the folks at Men’s Fitness magazine.

This month’s illo was ‘How to escape a rhinoceros charge’. The fairly straight forward brief became more complex as I did a bit of research into the subject.

Firstly, it’s only the black rhino that is aggressive, the ‘white’ rhino is much more passive.

Why then – I hear you ask – are these rhinos white? Well, according to Wikipedia, the two species aren’t distinguishable by colour. The name ‘white’ is a “mistranslation of the Dutch word wijd for wide, referring to its square upper lip as opposed to the pointed or hooked lip of the Black Rhinoceros. These species are now sometimes referred to as the Square-lipped (for White) or Hook-lipped (for Black) Rhinoceros.”

So, now you know how to distinguish (as well as escape) from an angry rhino.

Running technique illustration for Australian Men’s Fitness magazine.

This appeared as two different illustrations in print, but I’ve combined them here. It’s always fun playing with halftone dots to get that old school print effect.

And for those kids of the ’90s, please don’t sweat the technique.