Kenning's work can be seen in band posters for a range of Illawarra bands - Babymachine, Bruce!, The Nice Folk, Hy-Test and The Watt Riot.

"The drawing has led to getting known by everyone on the Wollongong music scene and becoming really good friends," Kenning says.

"I've always admired people who can get up onstage and sing and play. It's not something I could do.

"Though Bruce! are trying to do it. They said 'what do you play?' As a joke I said 'triangle'."

But they didn't leave it there either - one of the members of Bruce! later went into a music shop and bought him a triangle. Which means he has one less excuse for not playing.

While Kenning does create other works, the bulk of his output is band posters or CD covers. That's fine with him because he's a big music fan and keen to help out the local scene.

"I love the Wollongong music scene," he says.

"When you listen to some of the crap that's on radio and you see all these great bands in your home town, you want to support them."

Describing his work as "Saturday morning cartoons with an evil twist", Kenning is holding an exhibition of his art at the Captain's Quarters Gallery, upstairs at Beach Burrito in Wollongong.

"There's no real theme for this exhibition - it's just going to be bits and pieces of everything," Kenning says.

Trying to pick out about 15 works for the exhibition has proven a bit tricky.

"It's a bit difficult," he says. "It's like trying to pick your favourite kid.

"I always pick my drawings to pieces after I've finished them. 'I could have done this better, I could have done that better'.

"The idea you have in your head is never going to go down on paper. It's taken me years to be OK with that. But I've come close a couple of times."

All his work is drawn freehand before being scanned into the computer, where it is coloured.

Even though it is on the computer, Kenning says he resists the urge to constantly tweak the work until it's "perfect".

"I work on the computer and I could get things exact because it's on the computer and can be very precise," Kenning says.

"But it's got to look like a person did it. There's a lot of computer work out there and you can tell straight away it's done on computer - there's no human element to it.

"So I'm very conscious of not letting the capabilities of the computer dictate how the image is going to look."

■ The exhibition of Shane Kenning's art opens March 27 at Captain's Quarters Gallery, upstairs at Beach Burrito, 1 Globe Lane, Wollongong. They will be on exhibition until the end of April.