We were commissioned to design and paint some wardrobe doors. Sounds simple enough. We had a fairly loose brief to create something in an Art Deco style. What we ended up with is something a little more Art Nouveau that is reversible and contains some elements specific to the client. The cornflower design in the middle is based on their family flower and the family motto of ‘Virtus, Vigor, Victoria’ is referenced in the the V’s emanating from the goblet the lady is carrying.
Painting and installing them brought some interesting challenges that were largely self inflicted but you live and learn. Well, we try to. There’s even a flash of bright pink painted on the inside of the doors that we couldn’t get a decent photo of but you’re going to have to trust me it’s there. Righto, what’s next?
The lad didn’t know he was different – that was until the day he fired purple laser beams from his eyes! It all started innocently enough. He was talking with his boss over Zoom when he was jokingly reminded about a regrettable incident in the lift the previous year. He tried to wisecrack back but the jibe had already got under his skin and then before you knew it a purple light started to crackle from his eyes. The next thing he knew he had burnt a hole clear through the laptop screen and window in front of him. The acrid smell of burning plastic filled the air. He wondered what on earth he was meant to do next…
Our first mural of 2021 has been a long time coming but a couple of days ago the clouds parted long enough for the sun to briefly pop its head out to say hello. That cheery greeting was enough for us to put on our painting jackets and get outside for a bit of freestyle al fresco painting.
We’d recently given the wall a spa day in preparation for mural season and stripped her back to her under layers but we’d stopped short of giving her a new coat of white because we both agreed the wall looked pretty cool as it was. A free background if you will. Time to put it to use.
All we had to start with was the basic stencil of the woman and after a fair bit of hoohah about what exactly we were doing we ended up with is the lady with the copper earrings here. She looks like she knows stuff she’s not going to tell you. And that’s most certainly the case. You just don’t have the correct security clearances.
In the post-apocalyptic landscape of discarded digital art and unfinished 3D models Janine moved unnoticed in the shadows and had survived five update cycles now by feasting on the binary code of unsuspecting half finished designs. She wondered how she would ever get out of development hell. She had tried everything she could think of – from corrupting her own code to impersonating another file format – with no success. Then, early one morning, BAM! It happened. She had been minted. Finally. She could now progress her plans once they hooked her up to the blockchain…
Pamela had been having strange dreams. She dreamed of being imprisoned. She dreamed of the bangs of an auctioneer’s gavel and of her being bought and sold like any other commodity. She dreamed of being free like the birds she would see sitting on the wire from the electricity pylon outside her window. Behind all this was the nagging doubt that something was wrong. She just couldn’t put her finger on it…
Pamela was, of course, the first fully functioning AI to be minted as an NFT and put on the blockchain. What will become of her? Only time will tell…
No one’s perfect are they? Grace here used to come close but she’s been patched up and put back together so many times she hasn’t got an original chip in her entire body. Which is what is currently bothering her. The question of whether an object that has had all of its component part replaced remains fundamentally the same object. She looked at her hands and then the siren went off indicating enemy forces incoming. She picked up her rifle. It was time to get back to the grind…
I’m no expert on 3D so imagine my delight when I came across a magic drawing pad that would turn my doodles into 3D – or so it proclaimed. Admittedly my experience with 3D is limited. Once at the cinema many years ago and my own two eyes. That’s about it.
Now I realise it’s not going to suddenly turn it into a fully rendered 3D model exactly but I was expecting a little more than it gave me…
We here at id-iom love a good collaboration, we’re doing it pretty much every time we make a piece. We especially like it though when it is with someone else and today we have Background Bob (aka Noah).
We were asked along with a load of other artists to paint on some bits of cardboard that Noah had already done his magic on. All we needed to do was come up with something suitable.
Now all the pieces are up for grabs on Ebay and if that isn’t enough all of the proceeds will support East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation Trust Charitable Funds. After having a peek at ours why don’t you type in ‘Background Bob in to Ebay and see everyone else’s pieces and if you are feeling particularly fruity you can even throw in a bid or two.
“Noah (aka Background Bob) is 12 years old and has hydrocephalous, cerebral palsy and epilepsy. Despite all this he is a very happy, smiley, cheeky young lad who loves to paint.
The project started with background bob painting some abstract backgrounds on cardboard, and then we reached out to artists via social media to come and collaborate with him.
The response was huge! Over the next 4 months we sent out and received back a massive 240+ artworks back from artists from all genres and from all over the world.
We followed up on the success by producing a beautifully put together book containing all the collaborations. So far to date our book has made a whopping £18,000 profit, which has already been donated to Colchester and Ipswich hospitals charity, and in particular towards the children’s ward at Colchester hospital, as a huge thank you for all the support and care Noah has received from them. Our book is also available via ebay, so why not buy the book to accompany your artwork?
The project grew and grew, got huge media coverage including The One Show, BBC Website news, Sunday morning Live, as well as numerous online and local press articles in this country and abroad.
The whole collection was then exhibited at Firstsite gallery in Colchester
You are bidding on a unique original piece of the @background_bob project.
All artworks are original one off pieces. The mediums used vary vastly from spray paint, screen prints, acrylic, oils, collage and even embroidery. There is something for everyone.
All artworks are painted on hand cut recycled cardboard. Due to this, some have wonky edges, creases and tears, which all add to the artwork. The sizes are approx. 20cm x 28cm, which is slightly smaller than A4. All pieces are signed by the collaborating artists either on the front or back. Some backgrounds also have personal messages to background bob on the back
Artwork will be sent securely packed, and signed for.
100% of all proceeds will be going to Colchester and Ipswich hospital charity, so bid high and help us make a real difference. Happy Bidding!!
We will do our best to get your artwork to you as quickly as possible, but please be patient and expect possible delays during these strange times are all experiencing. Stay safe!
Please give us a follow over on Instagram @background_bob as see what we get up to next…”
Leporine lord of the shadows Barry the Bastard has once again crash landed in my life and decided to make my life a complete misery by invading my dreams and trashing the place.
Like a lot of these things it all started innocently enough. I was chatting to a friend on Zoom without realising they had their pet rabbit Mr Snugglebus on their lap and was I telling them about my well founded fear of rabbits when he hoisted the sneering rabbit into view and tried to tell me they were cute. That was my first mistake. The second was to think that Mr Snugglebus might keep his big trap shut. Now, I’m not calling Mr Snugglebus a grass but I’ve now had six consecutive nights of rabbit based nightmares featuring Barry. Sleep is my enemy. The Moon Rabbit is coming…
I think perhaps I need to get out more. This lockdown is getting to me…. It is A3 in size and made using the magic of one’s sleep deprived imagination, oil paint, paint pen and acrylic. Drop us a line if you’d like it to grace your walls…
Well, well, well. Look who’s shown their face after all this time. Storm Bird is back and is angrier than ever. You may recognise the feisty little redbreast from short films such as Storm Bird (Dave’s remix).
With the very recent reintroduction of sunshine, I decided to do a bit of gardening to try and alleviate the relentless monotony induced by having to stay indoors all the time. Gardening has never been my strong suit and Storm Bird was more than happy to point out every single one of my glaring mistakes.
First, the worms weren’t fat enough and that was my fault for not feeding them sufficiently. Then the caterpillar turned out to be poisonous and how dare I try and get the mighty Storm Bird to eat tainted food? The list of my errors went on and on and on.
For 5 hours straight whilst I was toiling away in the garden I had Storm Bird continuously berate me for a myriad of different things including (but not limited to): being too slow, being too fast, not admiring his golden red plumage enough, staring at him too much, not listening, making too many cups of tea, interacting with the neighbours and pretty much a constant barrage of insults regarding my hairstyle. Really quite uncalled for if I say so myself.
She’s A2 in size and on high quality Bockingford paper and made using the magic of imagination, acrylic, spray paint, paint pen and watercolour. That’s about all I can give you on this one…
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