Fuego fire

In our ongoing series of superheroes doing mundane things here we have Fuego Fire – the Scottish Highlands answer to Human Torch from the Fantastic Four. Here we see him enjoying a much needed weekend off spent pottering around the Chelsea Flower Show. Up in Glasgow there isn’t much of that sort of thing so for Fuego it’s a rare treat. You might be wondering why Fuego would wear his uniform when having a weekend off in London and it’s because when he’s not in costume people regularly mistake him for Scottish actor and impressionist Stanley Baxter  This is never a problem when he’s in Scotland but anywhere else it’s just a nightmare…

It is A2 in size and made using Acrylic, pencil and oil pastel.

Cheers

id-iom

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With our backs against the wall

With our first day back to work today, I thought I’d share what I’ve managed to get done since the new year. Here we have Lolan on his knees praying to whatever deity he believes in. I’m not entirely sure what he’s praying about but with the state of affairs in the world today it could be anything from the Australian bush fires to Trump’s opening gambit in World War III or maybe he’s just thankful that the Masked Singer is on. It’s really not for me to say but it does seem like we have our backs to the wall and its only the 6th of January. What I can say though, is that Lolan here is number three of four figurines that I’m working on and as you can see I’m in full-on procrastination mode when it comes to the hands…

Cheers

id-iom

Hindsight

It’s a beautiful thing isn’t it? Hindsight that is. If only I knew then what I know now, things would have been very different.

Frankie here can be a bit of a nightmare – as i’ve just found out. In passing one day I mentioned that she may make an interesting subject to paint and since then she just keeps turning up at the studio and taking her clothes off. I asked repeatedly to stop doing it but she kept saying she wanted to be painted. There was only so much of her hanging around drinking all the tea and eating all the biscuits before I had to relent and paint her anyway.

Afterward I told her about a nearby life drawing class and she’s now become a full time life drawing model. At least she seems happy now and people dropping by the studio no longer wonder why a naked woman is hanging around…

She is on A4 and made with the magic of imagination, smoke, pencil and acrylic.

Cheers

id-iom

Queen of Hearts

I think a piece this epic probably deserves its own theme tune. It would be some kind of weird 70’s disco number that warns you of her incendiary qualities with the line ‘she’s too hot to handle’. I’m pretty sure I could come up with a concept for the show to go with it if I gave myself five minutes. Probably something involving a dangerous female spy who works on our side but whose motives for doing so are unknown. I’m getting a little overexcited now aren’t I? It’s already shaping up to be a good show though…

It’s on a thoroughly fire ravaged door that we salvaged and even includes a specially made latex heart and has finally found it’s new home on the street.

Cheers

id-iom

If there’s hell below…

‘If there’s hell below, we’re all gonna go’ sang Curtis Mayfield on his 70’s soul classic. If he’s right I guess I’ll see you down there at some point…

For our second street drop we were determined to find somewhere that would take a good shot and we lucked upon the red tags so just whacked it up right over the top, took a snap and let it get on with it’s new life.

Cheers

id-iom

That girl is on fire

To calm her down I offered her a drink which she excepted but to everyone’s dismay, she ordered a flaming Sambuca. No one was quite sure what she was going to do with it and we weren’t disappointed. She downed it in one and there in front of us the light orange glow of flames started to lick around her body once again. No one was quite sure but as she said her thanks she again started to strut down the street with smoke starting to billow around her, this was when I decided to take a mental picture so that I could try and paint her sometime in the next week.

There I was just last Friday having a few celebratory drinks in the pub due to the fact that another week had come to a close.  When this woman comes sashaying past naked, literally on fire and without a care in the world. Now as I’m sure you’d agree this sent most of the patrons reeling, downing their pints and running off down the street. The more chivalrous of the group decided that instead of drinking their pints they would throw their drinks at the lady, thinking they were helping her out in some way but all that seemed to do was make the lady angry.

Cheers

id-iom

London’s burning…

Here at id-iom we love nothing more than a good challenge so when we were contacted by our local fire brigade and asked to do a logo for their unofficial uniform we jumped at the chance. They take pride in being firefighters in Lambeth and wanted something that reflected that so after scratching our heads for a while we managed to come up with an initial selection of designs. After these had been shown around the interested parties a clear favourite emerged:

Design using the LFB logo. Naughty id-iom.

As our design is an unofficial item we weren’t really supposed to be using the LFB logo so instead swapped that out for the call sign for the three different stations that cover the borough of Lambeth and, hey presto, we had ourselves some approved designs.

Just yesterday we were invited down to Clapham Fire Station to pick up a couple of t-shirts they’d had printed up and to have a look around. id-iom’s collective inner child (which is never difficult to reach) was, of course, pretty excited by the idea of a personal tour of a fire station and we certainly weren’t let down. We were given a brief rundown of how the station operates, were shown the fire engine, had all our inane questions were answered and I even got to try on some breathing apparatus. Win all round.

Even the cat is down with this one. And you know how choosy cats are.

What kind of self respecting man-child would turn down the chance to wear the breathing rig?

Check out this bad lad. It had some kind of articulated crane arm on it that can reach 30 m (I checked). Now how would that be for getting up hard to reach high places for a bit of painting?

Cheers

id-iom

Stars, hide your fire

I’m not sure if it seems apparent with the finished piece but I was a bit giddy when I started painting this, as it was the first wall we’ve tackled this year, and just started chucking paint at the wall with no ongoing plan whatsoever. Before I knew it I’d managed to cover the entire  wall with a garish bubblegum bright patchwork of colour.

I do wonder what I was listening to at that point and after a bit of a sit down decided that it was all a bit bright and fancy so I needed to take it a little darker.  I finally struck upon the idea of having a lady who, on the face of it is all bright and sparkly but, in fact, harbours some dark desires. With some snippets of text in between the bright patches, some black stencils to indicate the darker undercurrents and a quote from Macbeth over the whole thing it was time to step back and call it done. As this is in the basement of our local pub i’m hoping it should remain in place for a good while to come. Right, what’s next?

Cheers

id-iom

New drug makes old men red hot lovers

New drug makes old men red hot lovers

Now this doe-eyed lothario has you in his sights there is no escape! You’re probably thinking of Viagra or some such but you’d be wrong. This new chemical is distilled from the tears of a dodo and comes direct from our South American chemical research laboratory. Unfortunately, rather than just boosting your libido it actually makes you spontaneously combust at the same time and effectively turns you into a flaming love kebab. We’ll get this one nailed but until then who wants to be a firework?

Like the rest of this sordid little lot these pictures have been reimagined from actual news headlines. I fill my head with this grubby nonsense so you don’t have to. Vive la revolution!

Available from idiom.bigcartel.com/products

Cheers

id-iom

Title: New drug makes old men red hot lovers

Materials: Paint pen, acrylic and charcoal

Size: A4