Keen followers of id-iom will know that we like to put a little write up with our pieces. Today is no exception but it appears we’ve run into a small snag. Neither of us can seemingly come up with anything suitable for today’s decidedly lovely painting. She’s a wistful looking lady gazing off stage left. That much is for sure.
It’s usually quite obvious (to us at least) what the blurb will be. But not today. It’s veered from being related to the boredom of lockdown to living in a crashed space station to shouting at your own private parts. I wish I was making it up. Now, in the fruitless search for a write up, I’ve had to go all existential and write about my inability to come up with something to write about. Meta. Take from it all what you will…
If you’d like to give her a home drop us a line etc. It is A2 on high quality Bockingford paper and made using Acrylic, paint pen, watercolour pencil and spray paint.
‘It’s not a dove, so don’t forget it, it’s just an aspirin with a bird scratched on’ (sung to 10cc’s ‘I’m not in love’). It was all Doona could do was to repeat the line over and over again to try and quell the anxiety storming around her brain. She had just dropped her first ecstasy tablet and she wasn’t sure exactly what was going to happen to her. She’d read everything she could on the interweb and spoken with friends but she knew the actual experience she was going to have would be tricky to verbalise. Suddenly the first bars of The Streets ‘Blinded By The Lights’ were dropped by the DJ and she began to float…
Created using the magic of acrylic, oil pastel, paint pen and imagination on classy A2 Bockingford paper. Get in touch if you’d like to give her a new home…
Growing up as one of three brothers the phrase ‘First up, Best dressed’ was not just a saying but a way of life. There was only one rule. The first person up had free choice of clothing including any items that belonged to a sibling. There was no argument with this rule. Only later, with the power of the internet, did I learn that it is a relatively common saying in the North of the UK and historically applied to other families with an equivalent number (or more) of potentially warring siblings and was, in fact, more commonly used as a saying much along the lines of ‘the early bird catches the worm’ rather than an actual house rule. You live and learn.
Today’s piece is inspired by this rule and here we most definitely the first up. He’s gone all out and has selected a dinner jacket and bow tie and looks simply FAB-U-LOUS. He’s on a 100 x 70cm canvas and has been made using stencils, spraypaint and the ancient art of paint chucking. Drop us a line if interested.
With the advent of legal cannabis in some US states and the legalise bandwagon gaining momentum in other a few other places internationally I thought I’d look ahead to a time when the UK has followed suit and id-iom have managed to get themselves a combined gallery/studio space/coffeeshop in London’s bustling West End.
In order to market to our new found clientele we’d need some handy marketing materials – which is where our little infographic cards would come in pretty handy. It’s an illustrated guide for beginners on how to go about crafting a small joint. On the reverse are a selection of id-iom approved advertisements which we hope would be of interest to our prospective patrons. There, I’ve got it all sorted – apart from what to actually do with them. I was initially thinking of getting them into the little pockets on the backs of airline seats but I only ever seem to travel Ryanair and they’ve removed the pockets. The cheap feckers.
If anyone can think of something fun we can do with them please do drop us a line as I can’t currently think of a suitable use for them. Which probably begs the question of why I created them in the first place but that’s not really for me to answer right now.
I’ve had a slightly enigmatic little project on the go for a little while now (as I’m really not sure what to do with it) and needed some fake advertising for the reverse side. Hmmm… What to do, what to do? Then in a small flash of inspiration it came to me. I would create a drink advertisement for a nice frosty can of ‘Man the fuck up!’ Once I had that much locked in the rest of the design pretty much took care of itself.
I would imagine the drink to be something along the lines of an alcoholic power drink (do they even exist?) to be consumed when life conspires against you. A little something that would definitely separate the men from the boys. The online and TV advertising would feature an accompanying soundtrack of a dubstep version of Billy Ocean’s 1985 hit ‘When the going gets tough’ followed by the tagline of ‘Feeling tired and emotional? Try a can of Man the fuck up!’ read by James Earl Jones. And that would be that. I just wonder what a can of Man Up would actually tastes like…
After a couple of years hiatus it was once again time for Upnorthfest. After the first one in Southport this time it was back but had gone further up north to Sunderland. After we’d loaded up the id-iomobile it was time to hit the road. A gruelling 6.5 hour drive saw us arriving around 1.30am where, thankfully, our gracious host was still up and receiving guests. (A big thanks to Pauline for putting us up and Frank for putting us in touch with her!)
The next morning we were up early and headed down to Studio Q where we’d be painting. Street work in late September is always something of a gamble so we were hugely relieved that it was blue skies and sunshine all round. We got shown to our wall but it hadn’t yet been painted with red oxide, the paint of choice for this year’s festival, so to start the day it was rollers at the ready with red oxide in hand. The first act of the day was managing to break the extendable roller so a quick trip to Homebase was in order. After that it was the laborious job of painting the wall with the glue-like red oxide.
Using the tower scaffold proved easier than anticipated once we’d managed to get the legs level and once the wall was dry it was time to move onto the main event – Jack Mackem the Sunderland Fitter. We’d done a little research in the hopes of coming up with a good design and it was revealed that historically the playing card the Jack of Clubs was also known as the Sunderland Fitter. Once we had this little nugget of information the design pretty much suggested itself. The ‘Mackem’ ambigram in the middle was the final flourish and we’re left with the somewhat moody visage of Jack Mackem the Sunderland Fitter. As he’s the Jack of Clubs it’s probably fitting that he looks something like a bouncer. With any luck he’ll be gracing the streets for a couple of years so keep your eyes open if you’re up in the North East.
Today’s offering is a little bit of graffiti archaeology. We have had a few different versions of this ‘Wha Gwan?‘ design up on the blog before but this one I particularly like as over time it had disappeared under layer upon layer of posters for bashment nights, circuses and fairs and local theatre productions but once they had become too numerous they were cleared away and I’m proud to see that our little paste up was still clinging tenaciously to the side of the metal box and looking largely unharmed.
For the uninitiated, the phrase ‘Wha gwan’ (whaa gwaan) means ‘what’s going on?’ in Jamaican Patois. The spelling varies but the meaning does not change. As we live in Brixton this is not an unusual phrase to hear around the place.
After our initial trip to Southport for the inaugural UpNorthFest earlier in the year we had a few wheatpastes left which we didn’t manage to get round to pasting up. So instead we send them up to Optik Nerve – our man on the scene in Southport – who kindly agreed to get them up for us. Many thanks to him for getting them up and getting some photos for us.
As Southport pier is the second longest pier in the UK (after the 2km pier in Southend-on-Sea) we decided on the slightly tongue in cheek slogan of ‘Never mind the length, feel the quality’ above a stencilled image of sunrise at the pier. Surely Southport tourist board couldn’t have done better themselves?
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