Karen has always had a squiffy eye and doctors have told her that she can have surgery to have it corrected if she wants but she’s never wanted to have it done and never will. She likes the fact that people find it off-putting and when talking to her just don’t know which way to look. Karen also has a knack to roll her bad eye into the back of her head to really hit it home.
Through the years people have called her many names due to her affliction but one that has stuck because Karen liked it herself was ‘Ambly’. Karen also has a skill which is a direct cause of her wonky eye: she can tell if anything is squiffy even by the slightest degree with just a quick glance. Due to this many business sectors hold Karen in great demand for her unusual abilities. From the scientists at CERN to the builders of the worlds largest skyscrapers, to Tony from down Karen’s local pub who always asks her to see if he’s squiffy but Karen is always to polite to give him an answer. In all fairness everyone at the pub already knows the answer to that one…
So how do we start a write up about lady Cheltenham? Maybe its best to explain our monumental balls up that started it all.
There we were during the week looking at the weather forecast and lo and behold it forecast rain for the Saturday. This year our design consisted of quite a bit of emulsion so we thought it best to get an early start so that it wouldn’t run in the rain. So with as much preparation as we could muster we headed down on Friday to get an early start which we did with an ease that id-iom is known for.
When we got to the Frog and Fiddle is when the problems started. The wall that looked like the one we were painting hadn’t been painted white like the rest and it seemed a little wider than what we were expecting, so we asked the bar staff who pointed at another wall which we took for consent to paint. In hindsight this was probably not the best idea.
Lets move forward to Saturday lunchtime when we finally dragged ourselves out of bed after a few too many drinks the night before we set off back to the frog and fiddle to finish our piece but i think you can already guess we had painted the wrong wall. With a few expletives thrown about for our stupidity we set about trying to get the new wall finished before either the rain stopped play or the after party started.
Anyway what we have for our troubles is Lady Chelts
Thanks to Andy and Angela for once again putting on a wonderful festival. Onwards and upwards guys!!
Sunbathing has a bit of a bad rap these days. Nowadays people are more likely to use fake tan than actually sunbathe. This could probably be put down to the scientific evidence that prolonged exposure to UV rays and sunshine can cause skin cancer which absolutely no one wants at all. Tamara here however was never one to worry about such things and revels in the sun’s glorious rays.
‘Scorching’ is painted on a found table top that I came home with after wombling my way back from the pub late one night. Given the weight of it I’m still not sure how I managed it back home with it all by myself but somehow I clearly did. After painting the portrait I felt it needed a little more so after a quick ferret around in the miscellaneous art supplies box I came up with a chisel of sorts and some lighter fluid. A little hard work and some flambe action and the burned lettering was done. Then it was onto the question of how to stick some real sand to it…
One minute it was over, then suddenly under, then seemingly normal and all in the space of a 2 minute window. Smoky just didn’t know what to do. For a start he couldn’t think straight and even if he could he wouldn’t know what to do either. The only nugget of information that popped in to his dim head was ‘Stop, Drop and Roll!’ and with nothing else to check him he did just that.
He banged his head against the white padded wall and had a sudden moment of clarity before another rapid loss of function. Ol’ Smoky never was the same after he came across that bale of African Gunji 65 back in the day. Some say that if you look real close you can still see the smoke swirling around behind his eyes…
Created using the magic of smoke, pencils and paint pen after I’d seen a Youtube video showing a guy doing something similar. I quite like the way he turned out in the end.
I was staring blankly out to sea whilst on holiday recently letting my thoughts drift aimlessly like the waves crashing on the beach in front of me. I must have been at it for quite a while as another beachgoer came over and asked ‘What’s wrong? You look so sad!’ So I preceded to tell them my woes, my current hopes and dreams and my thoughts on Brexit and the state of the music industry.
This must of taken a fair while because eventually they went in to their beach bag coming out with an A4 sketch pad and said they thought it would be best if i got it all out via the process of sketch. To try and fight the demons I decided to try and draw how I felt about it all but in the end all I got was this. I’m not going to try that again…
Heed my warning!! Ignore the polka dots in the background!
They are there to try to induce some sort of cognitive dissonance in the viewer so that they are sick all over themselves whilst look at this guys face – which he says is about to slide off his skull! I’m not entirely sure if that’s really the case as the only time I’ve ever heard this happen is when you either have to much plastic surgery on any given weekend or when you open the Ark of the Covenant. Either way he sure does have an odd head.
The year is 2035. The place is London. Brexit has come and gone. Rogue stormtroopers now roam the streets. They’re armed and looking for food – just like the rest of us. They said there would be ‘adequate food supplies’ in the case of a ‘no deal’ brexit. They lied. The future is coming…
The lady in this picture is what most people would call stand-offish or aloof and that is because she is. She just loves to look down on everyone and not just in a figurative sense but a literal sense as well.
When talking to her she looks down at you from a high angle due to her Amazonian height (and heels) but more importantly the sharp angle at which she keeps her head in relation to whoever she is talking to. She likes to think it creates the illusion of looking down at a miniature model just like in tilt shift photography.
To get the angle I wanted for this portrait I had to use every trick in my arsenal and resorted to painting her whilst balancing precariously at the top of the tallest ladder I could lay my hands on…
Today’s sphere is out living life in the real world. It’s watched one too many episodes of Rick and Morty and has decided to go on an inter-dimensional trip of it’s own. It has chosen our world. Quite why it is examining a moss covered wall is anyone’s guess. What Black Sphere 004 will make of it would also be well beyond our range of reckoning. Perhaps it will declare war. Perhaps it will stop for a picnic. Only time will tell…
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.
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