First up this week we’ve got ‘The Boy with the Red Face’ who is now on eBay (click link to follow to eBay)..
Well, well, look what we have here. It looks like someone has been caught doing something they shouldn’t by their mum. The red face and sullen eyes are an obvious giveaway but just look at those tears as well – that’s a sure fire sign if ever I saw one! The only thing I’m not sure about is what exactly this lad has done – but don’t worry, we can always make something up…
Hubert, for that is what we shall call him, was on his way to the shop to fetch some ciggies for his mother. When the proprietor turned his back Hubert decided to steal some Disney Princess ‘Princess Glamour’ Sticker Collection packs from the counter but Hubert wasn’t a skilled thief. Needless to say the owner caught him and promptly escorted him back home after leaving the shop in the hands of Mrs Clompton who had only just popped in for a pint of milk.
The story continues of course but i think you can fill out the rest of the story yourself and how he ended up like he is in the painting…
Cheers
id-iom
Title: The Boy with the Red Face
Materials: Acrylic, paint pen, spraypaint and glitter
Size: A3
For today’s instalment of Other People’s Graffiti we’ve got a genuine treat for you. This one has it all. I saw it and thought ‘Instant classic. Definitely one for other people’s graffiti’. The artist is unknown although indubitably deserves props for such a well considered masterpiece. It has both idea and execution nailed. What more can I say?
‘Less is more’ I hear people say sometimes. Here at id-iom however we tend to find that phrase a little strange as minimalism is not something we’ve ever really been able to practice. It could be that way because there are two of us each armed with our own opinions about what to do when a piece stalls. It usually involves adding some more mess and/or colour. Well today, for reasons unknown, we have managed to produce something minimal. He hasn’t even got a head. Just a suggestion of some hair and some disembodied eyes. And you can’t get more minimal than that. Well, you probably can but not if you’re us.
Cheers
id-iom
Title: The boy who cried
Materials: Paint pen and charcoal
You are just plain wicked! Just look at this little cherub. For some reason best known to yourself you’ve just told her that she can’t have the new My Little Pony ‘Castle in the Sky’ playset for Christmas. And this is the result. I’ve just told her she can have a little go on my new Playstation 4 (when I get it) but she’s having none of it, which is a real shame as it now looks like she’s going to get nothing for Christmas. And it’s your fault. Like I said, you’re wicked.
This was my second recent skirmish with skin tone and I’m not sure if its any better than the first but one thing I can say is that they certainly look better in the flesh (da dum ting!)
Cheers
id-iom
Title: The Imploring Look of Youth
Materials: Spray paint, paint pen, acrylic, pencil, pastel and charcoal
Now we’ve surely all heard the tale of the boy who cried wolf and the fact that when a wolf did attack his flock no would would believe him and come to his aid as he’d cried ‘wolf’ too often before. This is obviously a cautionary tale on the perils of lying and believability that the subject of this picture could do with absorbing. He’s forever telling tales to try and make himself look good and his buddies/siblings/other kids look bad. He’ll be in danger of having no one left to believe him when things do eventually go pear shaped, as they appear to have here…
To say painting this piece was a labour of love would be a lie as I find painting skin tone is one of the hardest things to get right. There are just so many colours involved that you would never guess would be. Whenever I try it usually makes me feel pretty inadequate as an artist but this time I kind of like it – even after hating it for so many hours. Oh well onward and upward i suppose…
Cheers
id-iom
Title:The Boy who Cried Wolf
Materials: Spray paint, paint pen, acrylic, pencil, pastel and charcoal
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.
Hands up who knows the story of the King Midas and his golden touch? Well, it’s the story of a greedy and foolish man whose wish to have everything he touched turn to gold became reality. He soon came to realise that this wasn’t quite as great as he thought as having food and drink turn to gold made life pretty difficult.
Now look at the subject of our picture. Here is a man who seems to have everything and but as the picture states ‘yet still he cried’. He had it all; women, jewels, drugs, money, all the wealth of the world but unfortunately that means little to a man who can’t enjoy them. The folly of human greed is a tale he is surely learning the hard way as he cries himself to sleep worrying that his fortune will be taken from him and that he can trust no-one. As they saying goes – money can’t buy you love.
We have already put the still photo of ‘Cliff was visibly upset…’ up but now, after a little tinkering with our Super 8 footage, we have the pleasure of bringing you the moving picture version. If you’re not satisfied – you can have your 1 minute 55 back!
If, like me, you can clearly remember the first time you watched Oliver Stone’s ‘Platoon‘ then the death of Sgt. Elias (Willem Dafoe) is a pretty emotional scene where Adagio for Strings is playing over footage of a wounded Sgt. Elias trying to escape from the Viet Cong but ultimately getting mowed down in a hail of gunfire. I felt my dramatic fall was entirely reminiscent of this epic scene so felt a small homage would be worthy for inclusion in our humble production. For my fact of the day I’ve learned that the iconic image of Sgt Elias with his hands in the air is actually a recreation of a famous 1968 war photo by Art Greenspon (as depicted below – and if you can’t remember or haven’t watched the scene from Platoon i’ve included that too!):
Image via Wikipedia
Platoon/Greenspon photo
I’ve put plenty of links in today but i’m not entirely sure how many of them will work as many US based websites are shutting down for the day to show solidarity to opposing some potentially far reaching copyright legislation that the US is considering that would make it illegal for any US site to link to any site that has any copyright infringing material. Now, whilst this doesn’t directly affect the UK at the moment you can be sure that we’ll be passing something similar if it gets through over there and, personally, I quite like the internet as it is…
After a highly enjoyable Christmas and predictably long New Year it’s down to earth with a bump and on with the business of dealing with a brand new year. I can only hope that 2012 is a good one. Bring it on…
First up for the year we have ‘Cliff was visibly upset…’. 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.
I will hopefully be able to come up with some more pithy and amusing blog posts as my brain warms up again over the next few days so apologies for this missive which is, even by my low standards, somewhat lacking. I was really rather hoping my first post of the new year would be certified internet gold but i suppose that now at least i’ve got something to work on.
Well, it’s true! Nobody does like a sad clown. Clowns are contradictory enough as it is with their fake smiles and cheery alcoholics’ red noses. You don’t need one crying (even if it is a little girl) just to sour the milk further. I, for one, have never really liked clowns. Lion tamers – yes! Contortionists – yes! Trapeze artist – yes! Clowns – NO! But maybe that’s just me.
Anyway we had found a spare wall so thought we’d give some freehand a little go. Now whilst i’m not entirely happy with the outcome i’m not totally dismayed either. Hopefully we’ll be moving onto bigger and better things. Eagle eyed readers will spot my attempted freehand bit of lettering in the girls hair – which looked a lot worse before we went over it! It looks kind of neat there…
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