Back from the Stanley Awards!

Well, I'm back from the Stanley Awards held this year in Melbourne Australia. I had a blast!!! Thanks to Grant and Kerry-Anne Brown for being such great hosts and for everyone I met at the Australian Cartoonist Association! I feel as if I've left a part of me behind . . . everyone felt like family, like I've always known them. Australia holds a special place in my heart, well that and Skydiving, but we'll get to that in a bit. First, to explain the picture above.

No, I did not win a Stanley Award, I was brought to the Stanley Awards as a guest of honor and as a speaker/teacher. But on the night of the Awards, I was asked to present the award to the Caricaturist of the year and instead I acted as if I had won the the award, I thanked my Mom and a few others . . . the guy to my left was a bit confused and wasn't quite sure what was going on? Hee hee . . . I didn't let the joke go on too long and soon gave the award to David Rowe for best Australian Caricaturist of the year. Congrats David!



Me with David Rowe and that other fella! :)




Here I am with Stan Goldberg and the Stanley Award winners . . . congrats to you all!!!




The ACA has put together a band of cartoonist who play every year at the Stanley Awards . . . someone found out that I play a little guitar here and there and so I was asked to join the band. It was a lot of fun, and they were good too!




It was an honor to be a guest of honor at the Stanleys but even cooler to be an honor alongside living legend, Stan Goldberg, artist for Archie and so many other great comics! It was really cool spending time with him talking about art and so on . . . it turns out that a lot of my friends are also some of Stan's friends, what a small world.



Stan and I did an open panel discussion, answering questions and preforming odd requests . . . at one point Stan stood on top of the table and made fart sounds with his armpits! No wait, maybe that was a dream I had?



Getting deep, because what I do is so intense! :)



I was sponsored by Wacom which was really cool . . . here I am starting my demo/discussion.







I discussed my process and how I go about creating a painting.





Here are some of the steps . . .




I had hoped to do some drawing and painting after discussing everything that I had planed to talk about, but time was short. Turns out the Aussie's didn't mind hanging out a bit longer, so I did a quick sketch of their Prime Minister, Julia Gillard.



I then did a quick-ish value painting for them, explaining my approach and thought process while painting. It was really cool because while I painted they asked questions as well as throwing out hilarious insults about Gillard! It was a relaxing and fun crowd to hang out with!







Overall, my trip to Australia was amazing. My friend Brian came with me and we made the most of it. We had tons of Sushi . . . YES! We went shark diving which was awesome and then after the conference, we went skydiving! What a rush . . . I'm completely hooked and can't wait to do it again!



We jumped from 10,000 ft, free fell for about 30 to 35 seconds, falling at about 155 mph before the shoot opened at 5,000 ft. It was awesome . . . I've been on a high ever since!






The day before we left Brian and I rented a car and headed towards the Great Ocean Road. We had more sushi, watched a few surfers and then drove along the beautiful coast . . . man it was amazing! We then came to a place called Kennith River which had Koala Bears and Parrots hanging out everywhere in the trees. It was an amazing day!

Thank you Australia for such a wonderful time, it was a great holiday filled with so many great memories!