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12 Jan, 2009 (Deadline)
The 3rd Wacom Holiday Season Contest 2009

September's Featured Artist: Australia's Leith O'Malley

Congratulations to Leith O'Malley who has been selected as the Wacom Community's first monthly artist. Leith O'Malley is a South Australian visual artist who works in both traditional and digital mediums, and though he hasn't completely retired the pens, pencils, charcoal and brushes just yet,his latest weapon of choice is his large Wacom Intuos3.

An exhibiting artist and freelance illustrator, Leith has produced artwork for a variety of clients including The Guenette Production Company (Los Angeles), Le'Mag Magazine (France), BHP Billiton (Aust), Tokyo Electron (Texas), Bristol University (UK), Australian Arts magazine (Aust) and even the United States Coast Guard.

He continues to exhibit his artwork in various group and solo exhibitions, usually presenting large contemporary charcoal drawings and figurative oil on canvas paintings. The reaction to his ongoing jazz-art series saw him being asked to create the promotional artwork for not only two Adelaide Jazz Festivals, but also the first "Rio-Havana-New York" Jazz & Latin Festival held in Moscow in late 2004.

Leith's influences are many but notes Australian newspaper cartoonist Paul Rigby, Michael Leunig and American Illustrators Robert Crumb and Rick Griffin as illustrators who have inspired him to draw. These days he loves the work of Shaun Tan, Sterling Hundley, Brad Holland, Laurie Lipton and David Ho.

Below you will find a sample of Leith's works. We'll have walkthroughs of some of his works up soon!


	A recent illustration, this image was created from scratch on a Wacom Intuos 3 with two drawing programs (Adobe Photoshop and Painter). Using a Wacom ink pen, I roughed out the content of the drawing as a quick sketch in Photoshop with the natural brush set before exporting to Painter for the colour and tone refinements. I use a variety of brush choices while in Painter where the Wacom pen really is a joy to use as I swap from pastels to oil paints at the click of a button. Mixing these two mediums on the same page or canvas is virtually impossible in my own real art practices. I love being able to break the rules with electronic medium and the results are always exciting and fresh.I finish the drawing or should I say "painting" in Photoshop where I use several effects brushes and burn tools to "age" or rough up the image. A few tonal adjustments and sharpening and that's pretty much it.


	I have always loved the circus. My father was a travelling showman (country singer) with Ashtons Circus in the late 50's and I love hearing his stories about this time and looking through old photo albums. The clowns have always fascinated me and area recurring icon in my work.This picture was put together in Photoshop and Painter using a Wacom Intuos 3 tablet. I found some great Photoshop brushes on the internet for creating "hair" effects and put them to good use here. Incidentally, I like to tape a sheet of art paper on top of my tablet to give the surface I am working on some "tooth" rather than just running the pen on top of the smooth tablet surface. It just gives me the sense of working on actual paper rather than a screen. What's it about? The clown has finished her routine late in the evening and along with a friend (the viewer) is reading a letter from her lover "Gonzo" who is also a clown, but in a different circus.


	Using a scan of an old oil on canvas painting I did some time ago, I put this magazine image through my "Photoshop garage" before adding a few choice Photoshop filters and fooling around with the colour saturation. Some areas of the face were touched up courtesy of my Wacom pen particularly under the eyes where some burning was required to enhance facial tones and expression.The text on the right of the image was resized and floated on top of the face and the "LOOK" text which is part of my font collection, was rotated into place last. Some levels adjustment and a couple of "coffee ring" stains came last along with that neat "fingerprint" mark in the top left hand corner... Well, that's the "look" I was going for anyway..

This one is pretty much all traditional media, namely a large oil on canvas. It is part of a series of four paintings (Summer, Autumn, Winter and Spring) which you can see more of on my website.

The paint was applied in quite a thick, impasto way and the painting was sold at exhibition in Adelaide last year.


	What's this guy thinking right? Looks like he doesn't want us hanging around...mmm I have two versions of this painting. One is the original oil on canvas which was sold at exhibition, whilst the other is a digital version I have cropped, manipulated and refined slightly to enhance the image. The beauty of using a pen and tablet for me is the joy in sweeping around the image, adding and subtracting paint as you work up to the finished image. It has saved me so many illustration hours and I wish I had swapped my "brick" mouse for a pen years ago!


	This was an exercise where I used my wacom to "mock up" an idea I had for a work on paper. I used the pastel brushes in Painter predominantly with little or no preliminary sketch to work from. I literally went straight onto screen with a selection of brushes, roughing in colour and detail as I went along. I used a lot of cross hatching with the chalk brush in the final stages of the picture which ended up very close to the original work on paper.

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