As long time patrons of our local pub we were more than happy to assist when they asked us to design a flyer for a spot of local promotion. After some initial inspiration all that was needed was a little tinkering on the computer and we had a nice little image worked up.
Like the flyer says ‘Music, sports, pool table, chat and good times’ – although not necessarily in that order. At least I know where I’ll be going for a few jars tonight…
For further information about us and what we get up to you can visit our flickr, twitter (@thisisidiom) and we can also be found on Facebook.
We sold another version of this picture a short while ago and then a friend got in touch saying she’d failed in her attempt to snaffle it on eBay and could she commission another from us. As it’s her birthday very shortly we sent it along as a gift in lieu of the fact that we will be unable to attend. So ‘Happy Birthday!’ You know who you are…
It’s based on an old Celtic design that was in a book which was lying around in our dearly departed studio. This was one of several designs that I was thinking of getting it done as a tattoo so I thought I’d see how it looked before I’d commit ink to skin. As i’m a fickle beast I have since changed my mind and will, in fact, be going for a photorealistic teal duck. Probably. Maybe this one will get a look in next time…
We were asked if we could produce something that was to be a gift for a baby. As it’s notoriously tricky getting any sense from a baby we had rely on the basic information that we had access to.
Ultimately I was trying to make something she’d be happy with as she was growing up and that her parents would like. The end result is a combination of digital print, stencil and screenprint.
It’s now been framed up and is (hopefully) adorning her bedroom wall. Only time will tell if she likes it when she’s older. At least her parents seemed to approve…
We’ve previously done a fair bit of work down at Seven in Brixton Market and as they were having their bathroom area painted up they saw it as an opportunity for the artists who’d worked on the place to leave a bit of information about themselves to entertain any interested punters.
It seemed like a perfect opportunity to try out my new id-iom business card stencil so that’s precisely what I did. I’m pretty happy with how it looks so we may well be using this a little more from here on in.
It’s been a while since we’ve done any clothing designs but a call from the nice folks at Fist & Feather soon changed that for us. They are bringing out a range of sports/gym clothing aimed specifically at the combat/MMA market and wanted us to design a little something for their first male top in this range.
As id-iom comprises two combat-ready Alpha males we readily agreed whilst whooping and exchanging high fives. Then we sat and scratched our heads for a while, then we did a little internet research, discarding most of what we’d learned in a very manly way, and then we slipped into our Mexican wrestling costumes for a spot of grappling to get us in the mood to work on some authentic man work.
Working in a mask can prove sweaty and difficult but we persevered and eventually managed to come up with some suitable designs featuring, you guessed it, a fist and some feathers which were duly pinged over to the client. After a little to-ing and fro-ing and some nips and tucks (as it turns out they wanted to print on black) we had a final design which should be with the printers now. I can’t wait to see how ripped I look in my one when it arrives…
So there I was innocently posting nonsense on Facebook when I get into a conversation with Mr George A Raggett and we come to the conclusion that an A4 art swap was in order. After further discussion it emerges that I would be very much liking something that was all nice and fluffy whilst George was requiring something as dark as could possibly be. Challenge accepted.
After giving it a little thought a quote that is attributed (but not confirmed) to Ernest Hemmingway sprang to mind. Apparently he won a bet by crafting a short story of under ten words. The story was “For Sale, Baby Shoes, Never Worn”. Now that is pretty dark (and very brief). So I thought I’d work with that and give it a little spin by making it into an actual classified ad and including a few cheeky little zombie reference in there just to add a little spice. Once I’d perfected my vintage paper effect with spraypaint it was on with getting it printed and adding in the extra blood splashes and the red circle to highlight the ad. Challenge completed.
I found out just this morning that my parcel arrived safely with George accompanied by the parcel he had sent to me just before Christmas. And there I was imagining the German Postal Service would be efficient…
With 2012 fast becoming nothing more than a memory we thought it best to glance backward before we turn our steely gaze to 2013. So today both members of id-iom are picking our favourite five projects from 2012 to pontificate about in the hope that more people will actually get to see them and appreciate just how amusing we really are…
So, in no particular order here they are:
Stand your ground
This is just one of the many pictures that I was particularly happy with that we did at the now demolished House of Pain(t). It was fantastic to have a space to work in where we could do what we want with no constraints where there were also no financial considerations. I think it just allowed us to work as freely as we liked and that led to some great work. I think this is one of my favourites as we used a stencil we had used once before and gave it a new lease of life. ‘Stand Your Ground’ definitely looked better in the flesh as the thread attached to both the gun and the door frame gave it a three dimensional quality that just doesn’t come across as well in the photograph. Gun crime and gun control are always in the news so this one always seems topical but is now no more than a pile of bricks…
A Groovy Kind of Earworm
For this little bad lad I have to look no further than my own write up:
There was an article on the BBC website the other day which put a name to an experience which i’m sure most people have endured. They are known as earworms (amongst other names) and it is when you get a tune stuck in your head that you just can’t get rid of. Sometimes you really haven’t got a clue how it happens to be bouncing round in your brain but the more you try to suppress it the worse it gets (see this article on the difficulty of killing earworms and the man who had one for five long years).
After thinking about this for a while and realising how mildly annoying earworms can be we thought it our civic duty to respond by trying to create an earworm of our own using the medium of art. And being cheeky little tinkers we thought we’d do our best to get the hugely underrated 80′s megastar Phil Collins back into people’s consciousness by forcing his 1988 version of ‘A Groovy Kind of Love‘ into as many people’s brains as possible! We are not yet experts in the field but we’re hoping that as the hoarding is blue and we mention the word blue (which is written in blue – how cunning!) this will create some kind of cognitive resonance in viewers’ heads whereby a genetically modified supercharged earworm will be created.
Ideally the song will launch automatically and start playing in your head before you can do anything about it – and hopefully be trickier to get rid of than the auto-popup screens you sometimes get when visiting dodgy websites. It’s what advertisers attempt to do every day (but they have a more nefarious agenda) but our only regret is not knowing how well the whole project will work…
The Lady of the Lake
I really thought that ‘The Lady of the Lake’ would really get us some positive attention. Even now I’m proud of all the work I had to go through to get this done. No one will ever know that there were fake jewels stuck to the handle or that I’d made a special concrete filled bucket so the sword would stay upright. Not to mention how cold that water was and the rather strange look I got from the one man watching who was sitting on a bench quietly drinking a can of Special Brew. From my write up:
It is said that when storm clouds gather over England and dark days lay ahead then the Lady of the Lake will rise from her watery resting place bearing Excalibur – to be taken by a pure-hearted champion for the people (or perhaps it’ll just be taken by the council).
Well, with Greece on the blink, Portugal up the swanny and Italy on the ropes it would appear that the time is upon us…Good people of England take cheer for now Excalibur is here it will all be sorted post haste!
My favourite thing about ‘Cliff was visibly upset’ was the video editing. You’ll just have to watch it to see what i mean. After much debate and the consideration of far more serious titles (such as ‘Tears are the noble language of the eyes’) we finally decided that ‘Cliff was visibly upset…’ was the one to go with. As these rock faces are in a position where they are subjected to the worst the weather can offer for many months of the year we thought it a suitable title.
Lord of the Concrete Jungle
‘Lord of the Concrete Jungle’ was the result of us biting of more than we could chew but (thankfully) eventually managing to come good. We blithely agreed to do a 5.5m x 2.6m canvas to adorn an upstairs wall at the Electric Social without quite realising how large that would be and the fact that we didn’t have a space big enough to work on it in. Cue much head-scratching and some fun logistical fixes to get it all done.
Just priming the huge canvas took long enough never mind painting the background, cutting stencils and projecting. Anyway it took a while longer than expected but we finally managed to get it finished and drop it by the club with a feeling of relief. I believe they had a tricky enough time mounting it and getting it up on the wall but I think that was only to be expected with this billboard sized monster…
To tell you the honest truth i had a lot of difficulty picking my favourite stuff from 2012 and that’s not because i didn’t know what i like but because the other half of id-iom truly confused me whilst i was picking them. I thought he was going to group everything that we did at the House of pain(t) together but alas he has not so some pictures that i really liked aren’t on the list. Never mind, maybe you could take a look yourself and see which ones you like best.
To start my list though i suppose i should do it chronologically and start with my favourite piece from earlier in the year and work back, it is a round up after all, so here goes.
This piece is called ‘We are all fools for love’ and was completed at the Upfest spraypaint festival down in Bristol in around June of 2012. Apart from the fact that we had a lot of feedback from this piece, my main reason for picking it is that it was the start of a looser drawing style that i’m still trying to perfect. That said the 3D lettering adds a certain something to it as well which i really enjoy. Pretty and pink, what more can i say!!
This picture in my opinion is a bobby belter, it just pleases me and i like it even more due to the fact that it was done on a whim whilst i was trying to get ready for Sand, Sea and Spray (more on that in a bit as that involves my next choice). The picture came about because like any artist knows things can sometimes get off track. There i was in the studio trying to get stuff sorted yet the only thing i end up doing is painting a picture that no one will see apart from on the internet. In a weird way that makes me happy as i realise i’m not just painting for others or for money but to entertain myself and that means i picked the right profession.
Now this picture was painted at Sand , Sea and Spray up in Blackpool on what had to be one of the worst weekends to paint outdoors without any shelter. It was absolutely chucking it down but that didn’t stop us from getting this piece finished in between rain clouds. I won’t bore you with our tireless struggle against our implements and the weather but suffice it to say it was tough. Paint was spilled. Stencils were ripped. Words were exchanged. We had to make the best of the situation.
Now for this piece i’m just going to use what we wrote on the original posting of the image as i think it says exactly what i’m trying to say now. I have to say though that although this piece is really quite simple, i think it has an elegance which i really appreciate.
Did you know that a group of tigers is known as a ‘streak’ or ‘ambush’. Which is probably a fitting name for them because by the time you’ve noticed them I reckon they’ve either streaked past or ambushed you. They are the largest of the big cats, the third largest land carnivore (after the polar bear and brown bear) and are surely the epitome of danger and grace. I’m no expert but i’m pretty sure William Blake was thinking similar thoughts when he put pen to paper with his poem, The Tyger:
Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
Now didn’t William Blake just nail it with that? i think so.
I’ve added this piece because this is a continuation of where the sketchier, looser style that we showed in the Upfest piece has taken us, I love the found wooden board too. Now i just have to make sure that all those hours sketching over the last year don’t go to waste, so expect to see some more stuff in this vein i think.
And i suppose i couldn’t round off 2012 without mentioning this bad boy which took us ages to make in a very cold basement early last year. As we’d never done anything like this before it was definitely a labour of love but i have to say i think its pretty special.
Some people seem to have all the luck don’t they? There we were hard at ‘work’ (a euphemism for sitting at home trying not to distract each other from the tricky task of watching ‘Homes under the Hammer‘ whilst simultaneously ignoring both work deadlines and frigid draughts that seem to beset us from all sides) when my phone chirps to let me know it has received a text. After warming my fingers for a few seconds under a lighter i’m able to move my fingers enough to operate the phone. I somehow manage to press the necessary buttons and wipe the frost from the screen. My phone then reveals that we’ve been commissioned to design a logo for a new bar opening in sunny Barbados. How very fortunate – for the person moving out there and setting up shop that is!
Being the happy little worker bees that we are we then get as much information as we can pertaining to this forthcoming venture and set to work – properly this time but only after Homes under the Hammer has finished, naturally, and after setting a small fire under the computer to get her warmed up. I just know he’s not going to be having the same problems in the ‘Old Jamm Inn‘ when it finally opens in Spring 2013. I think their tagline is ‘Booze, beats and burgers’. Sounds ideal really.
If you’re in the neighbourhood next year I’d suggest you drop by for a warm welcome and a cold drink. Jamie, if you’re reading this and you need the interior painted up just let us know – we’ll happily take a busman’s holiday for flights and board!
We were recently commissioned to do a big canvas to celebrate someone’s clubbing history. An interesting commission and no doubt about it. Our in-depth quizzing of them revealed that they felt they were getting a little long in the tooth for the kind of shenanigans they used to regularly engage in when they were younger and wanted a little something to commemorate the fact that all those weekends spent wasted weren’t in fact wasted weekends.
Considering what we were trying to convey there were plenty of false starts and aborted designs and I feared this one would languish in development hell until we could come up with something suitable. After percolating in my brain for long enough a quote from comedian Marcus Brigstocke came to mind that would lay the foundations for the design: “If Pac-Man had affected us as kids, we’d all be running around in dark rooms, munching pills and listening to repetitive electronic music.” We were finally off and running.
We then had to come up with some way of celebrating the specific clubs that our commissioner used to frequent. We’ve used QR codesbefore and with the proliferation of smartphones we thought they’d be perfect for our needs. The codes link to classic mixes from the clubs involved and I had to go to a great deal of trouble to find a cassette to digitise from his earliest clubbing days way back in 92. Go ahead and test them (although you may have to click on the pics to bring up versions that are big enough to read). Eagle eyed readers will notice the small Mitsubishi logo concealed in the centre of the QR codes. How delightfully subversive…
Occasionally we are commissioned to produce something which isn’t much like our usual output and today’s offering is a good example. A while ago we were asked to come up a picture for a 40th birthday present and I’d like to think we finally managed to succeed with our off-the-wall offering of ‘Grandad, a bohemian grenade especially for you!‘
So when we were asked to do something for a 30th birthday we thought we’d have a little check of the interweb to see what was no.1 on their birthday. Lo and behold it was Survivor’s ‘Eye of the Tiger‘ so with such a good birth tune we thought it prudent to keep things simple. With our time done and our chances taken we purchased the 12″ vinyl version from Ebay and it was then just a simple matter of cutting a stencil for the dedication then getting it passed to our framer. My favourite touch on the sleeve design is the fact the band are reflected in the tiger’s eye. Hang tough and stay hungry.
