Gratitude - Staedtler and Uni-Ball

I believe that one if the most important things that a person can do is express their gratitude and appreciation for the people and things that enrich their lives, and this is something that I would like to start doing more of.
Today I am going to start off by expressing my gratitude to a couple of tools that help make the Land of Le beef: Staedtler Pencils and Uni-Ball Uni Pin pens.

Me hugging my comically oversized and slightly scared looking drawing tools...

I have been using Staedtler pencils (and erasers, lots of them) since art school, and I have never looked back. They have always made a high quality, reliable product. I especially like the HB (although I would never turn down a 2H either). Staedtler pencils provide the foundation of all of the Land of Le Beef sketches.

The pens that I use, Uni Pin by Uni-Ball, are a relatively new find for me. When I started the Beef a couple of years ago, I didn't put too much consideration into which pen I used. Eventually I had bought a bunch of pens just to try them out, and I would just randomly grab one whenever my sketches were ready for ink. Some pens would frustrate me by how fast the ink flowed, or their lack of precision, but I always felt great when I had a Uni Pin in my hand. Now I can't imagine using anything else. They come in different thickness; I typically use 0.2 for the main lines, and 0.1 for small details and shading. If I happen to be doing a larger illustration I might use a 0.3 or even the 0.5.

Anyway, to sum it all up, thanks Staedtler and Uni Pin. You're awesome.

The actual pens and pencils in all their glory...

woodland murals

if you like beavers and giraffes, and happy smiley vegetables, then this blog post is going to make you happy...

the Land of Le Beef was recently commissioned by Woodland (Hong Kong's top preschool, with 10 great locations throughout the city) to create not one, but two murals at their Waterfall school in Pokfulam.

this of course was a big beefy project (these would be my largest illustrations to date*). i knew that the murals would not only need be super awesome and fun to look at, but also needed to be educational, and inspire the children to do great things with their lives.

i sat down at my desk, pencil in hand, and started drafting what would become the greatest thing since the Sistine Chapel. below are the results.

fruits and vegetables - rough sketch and coloured draft

hippo, mouse, giraffe, beaver - rough sketch and coloured draft

fruits and vegetables - in progress, and finished piece

hippo, mouse, giraffe, beaver - finished piece

*shortly after completing these murals, Woodland invited me back to create an even BIGGER mural at their newest, most awesome location on Caine Road. blog post to come soon...........

a royal flush

Here is the latest addition to the Land of le Beef line-up of super awesome cartoons. I know what you're thinking, "super awesome is a bit of an understatement". You're absolutely right, but I just spent spent the last three hours searching for a better description for this cartoon, and it turns out that 'super awesome' is the single greatest accolade that exists in the english language. The Russians have a word that slightly exceeds 'super awesome', but unfortunately I can't type it because my keyboard doesn't have a button that looks like an upside-down 'h', or a backwards 3 making love to a question mark. So hence, 'super awesome' will have to do.