Quick boredom buster

So whilst we’ve been working on a few different bits and bobs including some massive B0 bits of paper which should be ready soon we realised we haven’t posted much stuff as of late. To remedy this i’ve got a quick face i painted on the studio door as i was waiting for paint to dry. Now back to work…

Cheers

id-iom

This means war!

You know how they say there’s a bullet somewhere with your name on it? In this case it was a giant arrow and it definitely had my name on it. Anyway, there I was minding my own business ambling to the shop when I hear an odd whooshing sound behind me getting swiftly louder. I stop for a second and am just turning around when something flashes behind me and lodges itself in the pavement with a concrete rending crunch. For a second I’m in disbelief. Then I realise that my old nemesis has broken the ceasefire and loosed a first salvo of their house busting giant arrows… THIS. MEANS. WAR!

A throwback to a 2015 street intervention where we got into a little altercation with our old nemesis.Seriously though, what else are you meant to do when you find a bit of street furniture that has been knocked over by a car?

Cheers

id-iom

Lady Samara Linoleum

Ladies and Gentlemen. May I present to you our newest debutante, Lady Samara Linoleum. A most mysterious lady indeed. We’ve given you a quick glimpse of this majestic A2 lino cut before she was inked up but we can now reveal her in all her majesty. I absolutely love how she’s come out complete with glitchy printing. Once you get a bit of hand finishing on there we’ve got a glorious little edition of four. 

Lady Samara is on A2 Bockingford paper and made using the magic of hand cut lino print, ink, paint pen, watercolour, spray paint and imagination. If you need the esteemed Lady Linoleum for your wall then you can find them in our shop or slide into our DM’s…

As a small aside, we’ve run out of ink so can’t currently do anymore at the minute but that does mean it’s Art Shop Time! Yay! Once we’ve treated ourselves to one of the best places in London we may do a run of just the print without any hand embellishing. But that remains to be seen.

Cheers

id-iom

I see faces. Even when trying not to.

Out of all the pieces of canvas we found this was the most complete with a somewhat creepy face that the other half of id-iom just did not like. After a few minutes of discussion on what we were going to do we decided we were going to go abstract although we had no concrete plans on how we were going to go about achieving this.

We find the easiest way to proceed when you have no plan is to just start and see where it takes you. This can lead to some unfortunate circumstances however…

On the journey to abstraction we had to start somewhere so our first idea was to turn the piece into a half man, half pineapple kind of thing. Luckily this idea didn’t hang around too long before the other half of id-iom decided to become a bit of a can killer and pierce any almost-empty cans we had hanging around the studio.

Whilst, it was fun we had clearly gone too far by this point. So we gave into the inevitable and went back to rescuing some of the face. With a little finesse and a whole lot of luck we set about trying to pull this canvas back from the brink. A square stencil here or there, pulling the face forward and pushing the abstracted area into the background I give you ‘I see faces. Even when trying not to’.

Cheers

id-iom

Flowers from a superhero

Gary was just like you and me until the day he accidentally wandered through a field of genetically modified flowers and became ‘Nosegay’ with the ability to grow the most amazing alien-looking bouquets of flowers right from his fingertips. Now, whilst this wasn’t very helpful when it came to fighting supervillains it did give him a certain celebrity appeal. Which he revelled in. His client list was quite something to behold. 

Despite this, his newfound wealth, and his access to jaw droppingly beautiful women he had repeatedly failed to impress any of them into going on a date with him. He imagined it was because he was ‘vertically challenged’ but in reality it was because he was arrogant and boring. Sadly he’d never have the insight to realise it…

This piece is based on an old sketch and is on a big bit of reclaimed canvas that was originally about 5 metres wide but had to be cut down into a slightly more manageable size. Which wasn’t really manageable at all. It’s now been rolled up so long that it’s no longer really viable as an actual canvas. Why I did it so large in the first place I’m not quite sure. 

Perhaps I’ll go and grab a smaller canvas and paint it again. That would mean that I have to take myself to the art shop though which is never an action to take lightly as who knows what I’ll come back with.

Cheers

id-iom

It began in Africa

Although Michael had been born in London his somewhat eccentric Nigerian parents would always tell him ‘It began in Africa’. Of course Michael could only ever think of the song by the Chemical Brothers whenever his parents said it but then it would always be accompanied by a weird and wonderful African legend or morality tale. 

His parents, it turned out, were truly encyclopaedic on the subject. Over the years he’d heard hundreds of these tales and decided to rate the nations involved on the quality of their storytelling. He had every intention of visiting them all, in the order he’d worked, to find out if he was right. This was going to take a while…

Made on a National Geographic map of Africa using the power of imagination, spray paint, stencils and acrylic. It is 48 x 63 cm in size. Drop us a line or it’ll be on our Big Cartel page soon.

Cheers

id-iom

Just a little mining town up north

When I originally found this map of Doncaster in a big box of assorted maps underneath my desk I thought ‘This is perfect’, I know a few people from Donny so I’m sure I can come up with something smart and urbane. Then, of course, inspiration deserted me and left me staring at a map of Yorkshire with no grand plan in sight.

After staring at the map for what could have been a week I decided to get in touch with someone from Donny to try and help me find a little inspiration. They gave me the following to work with:

1. Jeremy Clarkson – his mother had the Paddington bear factory 

2. Kevin Keegan 

3. Lesley Garrett 

4. John Parr who did St Elmo’s fire tune, actually comes to our local pub 

Very hard Hugo we are just a little mining town up North 

And that was enough to get me on my way. First I thought I’d try the route of the Paddington Bear factory but sadly couldn’t come up with anything good enough, so moved on to number two but football is lost on me so I decided to move on to number three which didn’t really give me anything to work with either. This meant I had to try and come up with something using number four and I truly thought this would be the one. Who doesn’t like a catchy 80’s hit for inspiration? Again, however, I came up empty.  I was just about to lose all hope of finding inspiration until I read the last line back to myself again and there it was…Just a little mining town up North.

Cheers

id-iom

In love as in death

Skull with lillies, acrylic paint on A3 paper, available on Big Cartel

The cut out

It’s funny what turns up when you’re having a look through old photos. I must have just snapped this in the moment and then completely forgotten about it. It’s the cut out piece from a stencil we used when creating a gift for our cousin’s wedding and I just think the composition of the photo somehow hits the spot. Which is nice for something that is usually just discarded.  

I like it enough to have it as the background image on my phone. So there. 

Cheers

id-iom

Johnny Omicron

We’re easily sidetracked, it appears. One half of id-iom had ventured out into the cold to scrape and blank out our previous wall as the weather was just about sunny enough. After an hour or so out there I head out to see how he’s getting on and rather than paint over the previous wall he’d decided to adapt it into something else entirely. Then I got involved. Then it got dark and we had to come back the next day to finish what we were doing. And it’s still not ready to be painted on again. Like I said, easily sidetracked. 

Anyway, if at first glance you thought this was 90’s cartoon legend Johnny Bravo then you’d be very much mistaken. For this is his second cousin twice removed Johnny Omicron. He’s twice as chatty but half as much fun. Now he’s got to go. The wall will be blanked out…

Cheers

id-iom