Be careful what you ask for…

Sometimes you have to be careful what you ask for. We were tasked with providing a couple of canvases as prizes for a corporate away day.  We weren’t sure who the ultimate client was but we figured it didn’t make too much difference in the grand scheme of things. We probably could have gone for something a bit more life affirming but eventually decided that a couple of demotivational posters would surely fit the bill. So that’s exactly what they got. I hope they like them…

Cheers

id-iom

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In vino veritas, in aqua sanitas

We were invited up to the suitably swanky Hill House in Norfolk to adorn their already impeccably adorned walls with some large scale outdoor id-iom artwork. Given that Hill House is often hired out for parties and events we thought we’d try and come up with something suitable and ‘In vino veritas, in aqua sanitas’ is the result.

The Latin phrase translates as ‘In wine there is truth, in water there is health’ and it is a sentiment of which id-iom and, I’d like to think, Hill House itself approves. The table tennis table in the same outdoor space was looking a little worse for wear so we decided to give that a little makeover too in order to match the newly minted mural. The place was lovely, the weather was great and the staff (when we saw them) were equally so. It was all work though as being artists-in-residence for the week left ample time to stroll the grounds with a shandy in hand examining the very many cute bunny rabbits that also shared the garden dispensing nuggets of truth…

Cheers

id-iom

The Blackboard Experience

This is my favourite entry of the day. A slightly wonky looking Manx cat. ‘Nuff said.

We were at home on the Isle of Man recently for Islexpo and Year of our Island and were asked if we could come up with something interactive that could be taken round a few locations this summer. Our answer was an 8ft x 8ft magnetic blackboard (that has been handily crafted so it can be broken down for easier transportation – cheers Dean!) with a stencil of the Isle of Man so people could add a magnet for their favourite place or some chalk pens to add their thoughts or whatever they like about the island.

The first revelation is that you can get magnetic paint! And it works just fine. Nothing like live experimentation. The second is that we got away with including Blinky from The Simpsons out in the sea towards Sellafield. Win.

Cheers

id-iom

 

It’s not like there was anything good on anyway…

As part of ongoing sojourn into painting some weird stuff we’ve painted up 8 monitor screens that are to be used as part of a giant Christmas tree made up of screens. Apparently most of the screens will playing little video’s on a loop and we had to take care of the non functioning ones.  Hopefully some pictures of the big beast in action will be forthcoming. We were asked to make them a little ‘Christmassy’ so we did our best considering it was us doing them. Anyway, they are what they are and I just hope they went down well.

Cheers

id-iom

Dashing through the snow…

We get some odd requests from time to time so when we were asked to paint up a wooden cutout set consisting of Santa, some snowmen, a couple of reindeer, a Xmas tree and a sleigh we thought it sounded like fun. Painting outside in freezing conditions however is not the most fun. If you combine the two then this is the end result.

Sinister Santa looks like he’s been on the Red Stripe all morning and he cares not that he’s pulled up on some double yellow lines, the reindeer appear to have been vandalised, the sleigh pimped, the tree dipped in psychedelics and the snowmen look like the result of some abominable colour based genetic tampering. It must have been quite the night. Let’s just hope it’s his final blowout before his Xmas rush…

Cheers

id-iom

It’s all fun and games…

We haven’t posted for a while but that doesn’t mean we haven’t been busy – because we have. We were tasked with coming up with a nice Christmas design with a little id-iom twist. Which is sometimes tougher than it sounds. After a few schmaltzy design dead ends we finally hit on the ‘fun and games’ quote which seemed just perfect for a Christmas party. Once we’d thrown some green fade stripes and festive baubles on the design we were good to go.

The classy foldable board is about 2.5m square and is to be used as a dancefloor backdrop for an upcoming Christmas event. They’ve got some UV lights which will strobe on the board once it’s in situ so we included some UV reactive paint on the lettering and some little snowflakes which are otherwise invisible. Unfortunately we don’t have a blacklight in order to test how well it worked but I’m quietly confident. To finish we also drilled a few holes in the baubles so we could put some fairy lights through for that extra pizzazz. We couldn’t leave the boards out all day in order to get a twinkly night shot so you’ll just have to trust me that they look the business. That is all.

Cheers

id-iom

Hop-tu-naa (my mother’s gone away)

We’ve been having something of a dilemma here at id-iom HQ this morning. We painted this on Saturday in Bromley town centre for their Day of the Dead celebrations. So far so good but this is where the problems start. We painted it on Saturday (28th Oct), the Mexican holiday of the Day of Dead is actually on Thursday (2nd Nov) but Halloween is today (31st Oct). Unfortunately coming from the Isle of Man we don’t even celebrate Halloween. We do Hop-tu-naa instead (pronounced Hop-Chew-Neigh) which also falls on the 31st October but predates Halloween and is the original New Year’s Eve celebration (it is thought to be the oldest unbroken tradition on the Isle of Man, so there).

Anyway after much discussion we decided to put this up today. Painted on some fancy 6ft x 6ft roller boards with fire jugglers beside us (you can the head of one of them in the pic!) we managed to get her done pretty quickly given the impending onslaught of darkness. The fancy skull wallpaper is probably my favourite part but what do i know?

Cheers

id-iom