We’re easily sidetracked, it appears. One half of id-iom had ventured out into the cold to scrape and blank out our previous wall as the weather was just about sunny enough. After an hour or so out there I head out to see how he’s getting on and rather than paint over the previous wall he’d decided to adapt it into something else entirely. Then I got involved. Then it got dark and we had to come back the next day to finish what we were doing. And it’s still not ready to be painted on again. Like I said, easily sidetracked.
Anyway, if at first glance you thought this was 90’s cartoon legend Johnny Bravo then you’d be very much mistaken. For this is his second cousin twice removed Johnny Omicron. He’s twice as chatty but half as much fun. Now he’s got to go. The wall will be blanked out…
It’s time to check up on an old piece and see how it’s getting on. The first time we saw black sphere 004 he was shiny and new and this is what we said:
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 its 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…
Now though we can see that time hasn’t been kind to black sphere 004. He obviously decided he liked what he saw and stayed a while, a little too long maybe. Maybe this is what happens to sphere’s when they decide to hang around on earth…
Just the other day we showed you our first commission wall in 18 months, well, when we were done they then requested we do a second wall in order to, sort of, explain the first. It consisted of a legend so that people could see the actual drug logos and names for the abstracted logos we used on the original wall. Now I haven’t done any precise stencil work for a while, instead preferring the ‘get it in the edit’ philosophy of painting, but for this we only had one shot and it needed to be as neat as possible. I have to admit we did pretty well if I don’t say so myself. After completing this one they then asked about a possible third wall. Watch this space…
It’s been a long time coming but we were recently commissioned to do our first big wall in about 18 months for a company which invests in new drugs. I have to say that it felt good to be out and about and painting again for a client.
We’ve spent too long left with our own ideas so it was nice to have a brief – which only really asked for one thing, which was to include some reference to the drugs they had invested in. Given that some of the logos were quite cool anyway that seemed the obvious way to go. As always the hardest part is coming up with a design but once that is out of the way and signed off though it’s on to the fun part; throwing some paint at a wall.
‘Stay out of the black and into the red there’s nothing in this game for two in a bed’. So said the great Jim Bowen on classic 80’s game show ‘Bullseye’. And he wasn’t wrong. We’ve adapted last week’s astronaut themed wall into a Bullseye themed dartboard surround complete with Bully, flying darts, stars and a large ‘ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY!’.
If you don’t know anything about darts or 80’s game shows then you may not be impressed with our updated wall. Anyone who does definitely wants to pop round to throw some arrers. We may even go the whole hog and throw in a general knowledge round and some prizes for that authentic Bullseye feel. Unfortunately we don’t have the budget for a speedboat but we could certainly stretch to a picture of one. Super, smashing, great.
We are id-iom and we like idioms. There, I’ve said it. Sometimes we’re not quite so literal but today we are and there’s not much you can do about it. Here we have ‘Graffiti is a piece of cake’. Now we all know that ‘a piece of cake’ to mean a very easy task or accomplishment and graffiti to be the act of spray painting a wall. What do you get when you combine the two? You get a nice slice of cake. Plus a small stencilled fly.
In all fairness though painting freehand with spray cans is actually rather difficult. So, in a rather contradictory way I’m going to suggest reading to the end of this post and then forgetting you ever read it. It’ll be better that way. Just retain the image of the nice slice of cake. And try to forget about the fly that’s messing with your cherries.
As an addendum to today’s post, my research – which consisted of putting the words ‘Graffiti piece of cake’ into Google – revealed the world of graffiti cakes. They’re a thing. Seriously. Check it out yourself. What kind of world do we live in?
A friend got in touch asking if there was anything we could think of by way of promotional ideas to assist with raising the profile of his fledgeling charity clothing label Disco Queen. Immediately I suggested stickers as a potential way to raise a little interest. Then I saw their logo and decided a neon wall version would be a good idea.
Why I’m not quite sure as we’ve never attempted it before. But since when has that stopped us before? It’s definitely not as easy as I first hoped but with a little work I’m pretty happy with the end result.
Now we’ve got the logo in front of your eyeballs that’ll hopefully lead you to investigate further. Check @ladiscoqueen on Instagram for more…
It’s been a tough year all round. George here used to be like you and I until the pandemic crept up on us. Now he lives by different rules. He’d had enough of the 5g covid pigeons, maskers, vaxxers, people who didn’t like electro swing and, most importantly, people who didn’t believe in the new messiah Donald J Trump. After that it was all too easy for George to leave society behind.
So he decided to prepare for the future he knew was coming. George found a bit of land in the most remote part of the planet possible. He didn’t pick Hawaii or New Zealand though as he thought Bill Gates might have a compound there like all the other tech CEO’s. He picked the Pitcairn Islands as they were giving away free land to entice new community members (he should probably have looked into why) and he needed as much money as possible to build the treehouse he had planned so he could live in solitude amongst nature. Now he sits alone in his treehouse amongst the birds. No wi-fi – No gods – No masters. Although he did wish he’d brought a bit more food with him as he only had one Chewit left…
Our first mural of 2021 has been a long time coming but a couple of days ago the clouds parted long enough for the sun to briefly pop its head out to say hello. That cheery greeting was enough for us to put on our painting jackets and get outside for a bit of freestyle al fresco painting.
We’d recently given the wall a spa day in preparation for mural season and stripped her back to her under layers but we’d stopped short of giving her a new coat of white because we both agreed the wall looked pretty cool as it was. A free background if you will. Time to put it to use.
All we had to start with was the basic stencil of the woman and after a fair bit of hoohah about what exactly we were doing we ended up with is the lady with the copper earrings here. She looks like she knows stuff she’s not going to tell you. And that’s most certainly the case. You just don’t have the correct security clearances.
Well, will you look at that. It’s only reveal day for my latest creation – a 3-in-1 mural of my cousin, Sandor. If you watch the video you can see that I’ve even dressed up for the occasion so you know it’s going to be pretty exciting. If you’re into that kind of thing.
Given that I was concerned that the different tapes at different angles could possibly be a bit visually jarring I’m pretty pleased with the end result. Let’s hope Sandor is too…
thisisidiom.wordpress.com 
You must be logged in to post a comment.