We here at id-iom sometimes get ourselves into a little bit of an impasse. One of us likes drawing nudes and the other does not, saying things like ‘Back on the naked ladies tip I see…(winking face)’ whenever I share a new one with him.
This is exactly how the conversation about this piece started and it would have ended the same way as it always does, that was until I found this quote from William Blake ‘Art can never exist without naked beauty displayed’ which I quickly scrawled across the picture. I might have found a workaround for this picture but the trouble is I have about 20 unfinished pieces all of naked women, can I find 20 more quotes about naked beauty I’m not so sure I can…
There are those who are blessed with the gift of beauty and there are those who have unfortunately been hit with the ugly stick. I hear you think ‘how very shallow for beauty is in the eye of the beholder’ and that is usually the case. But not always.
Nearly everyone who has had the misfortune of setting eyes upon this soul have come away from the experience in tatters. Expect psychological and emotional scarring for openers and just hope that it doesn’t get any worse than that. In the interests of full exposure I should really mention that it’s not just his looks which drain most people but also his unbearable personality. It has been said that he was once used to wake someone from a coma although how true this is I’m not sure. I can only imagine it’s a case of out of the frying pan and in to the fire with this situation though as once the poor victim is awake he’s fully aware he’s stuck in a room with this dolt…
Cheers
id-iom
Title: Some people call me pretty
Media: Acrylic, paint pen and charcoal
Size: A4
Imagine the scene with me in the back garden in my speedos trying to grab a few of those sun’s precious rays. Of course as you can imagine i was mildly minding my own business but i have to admit it was incredibly difficult with what can be only described as a extremely loud wailing noise coming from the next garden. At first i thought it might be a pole cat and a mongoose making sweet sweet inter species love, then i thought it could be a jet engine starting up but i just didn’t think the neighbours were that proficient at engineering, then i thought it could be a cartload of howlwer monkeys having a business meeting but that just didn’t ring true either. So putting on my neighbourhood watch waistcoat i decided to investigate. Peeking over the fence i noticed a lone lady sat on a sun lounger crying all by herself. How could such a thing make such an incredible noise i thought to myself whilst trying to get her attention. Eventually i did manage to grab her attention but that was only after i had thrown a bit of my beer at her. Startled she looked around at me but just kept on crying. I tried to console her from over the garden fence but to no avail so i did the only thing i could do, i went and grabbed my watercolours and set about painting her. After i had finished i threw the picture to her side of the garden where she didn’t even look at it but just carried on weeping to herself. Anyway after that i got bored, left the house and went down the pub. She was still wailing when i left and i’m still not sure why.
I thought I’d kick Friday off with another instalment of Other People’s Graffiti which today feature’s a classy light installation found at a mystery pub I found myself in by chance. Some might dismiss this as just some lights in a bottle but they aren’t really paying attention. There is much to like. One – it’s a light installation. Two – it’s in a Lambrini bottle with all the labels still on. Three – they’ve actually gone to the effort of drilling a hole in the bottle so the power lead can come out and they can still have the cap on. Four – the alluring glow of the pink lights on a windowsill behind a net curtain. Five – the presentation as a whole.
Put all those things together and just marvel at it’s majestic glory. Unbounded creativity combined with a wry eye for social commentary and some slick presentation. Beauty is where you find it.
Just check out this little lady – and what a beauty indeed. But she has another, darker side. One which you never want to come across. I once managed to fall foul of her wrath (accidentally!) and it was not a pretty sight. She was like the little girl, Regan McNeil, from the Exorcist and that’s no exaggeration. Because of this I thought of her when I came across this map of the Lake District and recalled Charles Avison‘s quote which was used by William Gilpin in his book Observations, Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty.
Cheers
id-iom
Title: Here is beauty indeed
Materials: Acrylic, paint pen, watercolour and charcoal
Size: 91cm x 117cm
Please email if interested
They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and I certainly believe that’s true. Here we have something of a repressed beauty as she is currently hiding her light under a bushel and hoping that Prince Charming will come along and appreciate her for her fine analytical mind rather than her good looks. Anyway I can only wish her the very best of luck in her quest…
Cheers
id-iom
Title: Repressed Beauty
Materials: Acrylic, spray paint, paint pen and charcoal
Size: A2
Please email if interested
This picture started off as a little something to do on a rainy Sunday. With the rain lashing the window, water was all I could see from my lounge. So it was to the watercolour paints i went which usually stay hidden away due to the absolute lack of skill I possess at using them. Then to compound the issue I decided to try and recreate skin tone – even though the last time I tried this I ended up with something akin to a beige black hole.
Well, with that looming over me it took me a long while later until I came up with anything. Finally it became this picture of a topless woman staring at the floor. It was Sunday after all…
We got back from another succesful UPfest in Bristol last night and were just glad that we managed to get the bulk of our work done on Saturday – when the sun was shining, the crowds were plentiful and the beer was flowing. Sunday turned out to be a different story but at least we managed to get our piece completed and still had time for a good look around.
After an early start on Saturday morning (following some feverish last minute preparations) we managed to make it to the Tobacco Factory for about 11.30 and then onto the Spotted Cow for a midday start. As we were a little late in arriving we got no choice in which boards we got but i think that eventually worked out to our advantage. Once we’d got disco-bag set up we got off to a quick start as we had plenty of work to be getting on with. By about 8pm we were pretty much done for the day so packed our stuff up and headed out for a few (more) beers. Whoever thought of putting us within such easy reach of alcohol in a pub garden certainly has a lot to answer for…
After a night on the town and a very rainy start to the day we return to the Spotted Cow to finish up to find that that some rogue decorators had obviously taken umbrage at our piece and had decided to show us a taste of our own medicine by wallpapering over the whole lot of it! It would also appear that the Grey Ghost Guards were around in the area (possibly in collusion with the rogue decorators) and looking to have our piece cleaned off the wall. Luckily we have some security footage so all will be revealed once we’ve had a chance to examine it and identify the perpatrators…
Anyway we did our best to remove the wallpaper and expose our image underneath resulting in a decayed and battered looking wall with the legend ‘Beauty is in the eye of the beholder’. I’ll get those pesky Daily Mail reading rogue decorators and Grey Ghost Guard critters if it’s the last thing i do…
For larger versions of any of the images please visit our flickr page.
As the Temptations sang in 1966 – ‘beauty is only skin deep‘. Now whilst I can appreciate a pretty lady as much as the next man this is definitely something of a truism. Surely we’ve all known someone who is the epitome of this – beautiful and lithe but also vain, arrogant and stupid. Ultimately somebody who steadfastly proceeds to shatter any preconceptions you may have had about them being beautiful. It’s people like this who just go to show that beautiful on the outside doesn’t necessarily correlate to beauty on the inside. Thinking about it though I reckon the converse is also true so you have to be careful. Just because someone isn’t physical beauty personified hardly makes them the nicest person in the world now does it? It’s a tricky world out there…
Saying that though in a world of 7 billion people there must be some people out there who are almost perfect humans – beautiful, clever and modest. But saying that they must be few and far between and i doubt it’s very easy to find them as they’re already probably the girlfriend of your local Russian oligarch…
Cheers
id-iom
id-iom
Title: Beauty is only skin deep (detail)
Media: Stencil, spraypaint & acrylic
Size: Approx 75 cm x 150 cm
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