A new lick of paint

So whilst over excitedly painting I managed to get a bit of spray paint on to some of the other half of id-iom’s girlfriends garden furniture. Not sure what to do I started to try and colour match the furniture with the spray paint I had at hand but to no avail. After a few minutes of panic, I decided to come clean and admit my mistake. Luckily I was told that the garden furniture was on its third or fourth repaint and that to solve the problem all it needed was a new coat of something spiffy for summer 2020. After a quick clean, some new colours were decided upon and hey presto something old looks new. Shame about the layabout who wouldn’t get out of the photo mind…

Cheers

id-iom

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Athena and the Lady of the Lamp

Athena and the Lady of the Lamp

There I was tidying up my front room and it came to the onerous task of cleaning the coffee table. The table was pretty filthy and I just couldn’t be bothered to sit there scrubbing away with cleaning products but thankfully an idea popped in to my head. What if i just quickly sanded down the surface and gave the table top a new lick of paint?

With nothing more in my head than the willingness to throw some paint around I started with gusto but the realisation slowly dawned on me that I didn’t actually have anything in the way of a plan. To remedy this I had a swift glance through my little book of ideas and struck upon a small nugget of information that I’d jotted down that was somehow to become the basis for this piece; Florence Nightingale used to have a pet owl named Athena which she rescued from children outside the Pantheon in Athens hence the owl’s name. Florence loved the little owl and she went on to become the famous British nurse whose name is now synonymous with the word ‘mercy’. That was all I needed in the way of inspiration so here you have a somewhat abstract version of Florence and her pet owl, Athena. If you want to discover the sad fate of Athena then you simply must read this article.

Cheers

id-iom

Title: Athena and the The Lady with the Lamp
Materials: Paint pen, acrylic, spray paint and charcoal on wooden board
Size: 122 cm x 117 cm

Start ’em young

In my experience it’s good to start them young. Hopefully this young whippersnapper will grow up to have some amazing can control if he’s starting out this young. The image is based on a photo I found on my phone of a friend’s kid looking longingly at the can of paint that I’d put on the table just within his grasp. The next shot I’ve got shows him playing with it (and don’t worry it didn’t actually have a cap on. I have added that for dramatic effect which I’m allowed to do as it’s my picture) but this is the one I like when he’s got that look of concentration like he’s working out what to do next…

Cheers

id-iom

East Coast Social extras…

So, we did some work at the East Coast Social in Southend a few weeks ago and I just recently found a couple of pics on my phone that I had forgotten about. I think the fumes may have been getting to me that day…

We added some ECS bulb logo’s to the half dozen tables they had upstairs and gave the bowler hat light fittings a touch of class with the further addition of the alternative bulb logo. I believe the venue is going great guns and wish them the best of luck.

Cheers

id-iom

Meanwhile, in Brixton…

When we moved out of our old studio we found a hidden stash of various hand painted and/or screen printed posters we’d done over the years and thought we may as well make use of them so decided to paste them all rather haphazardly onto a table top we had lying around. And that was all that happened to the piece for the first few months of it’s creation. Then I was hit with a bolt of inspiration and decided to make the piece something of a retrospective given that it features about 30 old paste ups designs that would never have seen the light of day otherwise. With the addition of a bit of background work, the mini-me version of us balancing precariously whilst spraying our ‘Take it from the champs, graffiti is for chumps’ stencil (which was swiped from a 1980’s New York anti-graffiti slogan) and the ‘Meanwhile, in Brixton’  stencil and, hey presto, there you have it.

Cheers

id-iom

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Hekate

Hekate

Once upon a time we had a table with a glass top. After one party too many that was a jumble of shards. So we replaced the glass with an appropriately sized piece of MDF to serve as the new tabletop. This was painted up with a jaunty design but over the last couple of years has become smeared and stained with a wide range of substances. So it was time to give it a little facelift…

Cue the white masonry paint and a bit of waiting for it to dry (whilst amusing myself with Lizard Lick Towing on TV) before I grabbed a couple of cans of inspiration/beer from the fridge and set to work. For some reason I settled on some kind of triple deity. But the deity doesn’t look very happy. I can’t wait for the weather to improve then hopefully I’ll motivated to do something a little cheerier…

Cheers

id-iom

id-iom chess table

Apparently chess has been around in it’s current form since the 16th century (and even then is based on an earlier Indian game called Chaturanga) and is a classic game of strategy and guile. I learned to play many years ago although it has been a long while since i’ve put my knowledge into practice. So if anyone fancies a game just let me know.

Anyway we were faced with a big empty table and had to come up with a snappy design to put on it. Some thinking/drinking time later we came up with the idea of a games table – and what better way to while away some time in the pub than an oversized chess board. In order to give it the id-iom twist we decided to design our own chess pieces for use on the board and after a quick bit of tinkering we had some half-decent pieces constructed which wouldn’t get easily lost or broken in the pub.

So, let’s play a game! How many of our customised chess pieces can you identify? There will probably be a prize for the winner if i can find something we can send out. For larger shots please see our White Horse flickr set.

Cheers

id-iom

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Let it ride!

The ‘Let It Ride’ table was perhaps one of my favourite commissions. It is named after an 80’s comedy featuring Richard Dreyfuss ( it only gets a 6.3 on IMDB but is well worth a watch!) Below is the completed questionnaire that we had to work with when coming up with this piece:

After absorbing the info in the questionnaire and a further conversation with the client we came up with the idea of the artwork being a playable (albeit almost impossible) board game which we would paint on canvas and then have set into a specially made table.  Once we had the initial idea nailed it was all downhill from there. It was basically to be a twisted id-iom version of the Game of Life…

We got in touch with a friend who works with wood and got him to create a table for us that we could set the 1m x 1m canvas into. Once that was underway we got on with the design. This is the digital version of what we came up with:

From there it was just a matter of painting the canvas up. Once we had finished and got our table delivered we had a brand new piece of art/furniture that i just knew the client was going to love…

White Horse – Round 2!

After the success of our first trip to the White Horse pub we were contacted to see if we wanted to work on the tables again (as we didn’t varnish them first time round as we wanted to see how they weathered) and also to take care of a wall leading into the gents toilet. As it was the gents toilet we didn’t think a little nudity would go amiss! So, like last time – we did some design, cut some stencils and grabbed disco-bag before heading down to take care of business:

MAKING A START WITH OUR WHITE HORSE WALLPAPER DESIGN

GETTING THE NAKED LADIES UP

NAKED HORSE HEAD LADY AND PARTNER FINALLY FINISHED

After we got the gents done the tables were cleaned off a little then we set to work on them. This time they got a couple of coats of varnish in the hope they’ll survive a bit better…

STARING AT THE SUN – PRETTY WORN LOOKING AT THIS STAGE

STARING AT THE SUN – SPIFFY NEW SUNBURST BACKGROUND DONE

STARING AT THE SUN – FINAL

ROUND TABLE – SCRUFFY LOOKING HORSE

ROUND TABLE – SOME MULTI-COLOURED DRIPS (DON’T YOU JUST LOVE KRINK!)

ROUND TABLE – NEW HORSEY

IS YOUR TABLE WORN AND TIRED LOOKING?

DON’T FRET, id-iom CAN HELP!

HEY PRESTO! ONE NEW TABLE…

See here for pictures from Round 1 at the White Horse (and more/bigger pictures from Round 2)…

Cheers

id-iom