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Here’s one I did tonight, a sigle line knot with soap!  Free-hand based on the angular tube designs… Hope you like the cusions too!? … more pics coming soon =]

Edit:  Here is a cropped pic-a-ture…

I am becoming increasingly interested in Graffiti and street art. The free-form wanderings, automatic doodling and dada-ism appeal.

Multi-zoomorph Keith Haring Tribute

Here is a negative of a sketch I produced during my holiday in Greece. I started out aiming to create a Multi-Zoomorph knot from a surfing manoeuvre sequence. I saw a set of pictures of Kelly Slater riding his ‘Wizard Sleeve’ self shaped surfboard.

Incidentally he named this board because of it’s looseness (someone’s been watching Borat!)

As the picture evolved I worked over the rider outlines, in the back of my mind this was suggesting the style of Keith Haring.

Haring was a trained artist and was caught up in the Graffiti turf wars in the Bronx, late 70’s. He started painting his distinctive figures on blank advertising hoardings in the subway. Sometimes his design would be a couple of low key figures, other times the work would fill the available space. He wanted to reflect the bustle of city life, dance, African art and the language of the street. Word.

I recently won a couple of commissions to design tattoo’s. One was pure Celtic waves based on my art, the other, a design of a Zombie surfer pin-up in the Style of Jim Philips! I couldn’t make it up eh? Probably the most fun brief I’ve ever been given.

Anyway, as a treat, and to try and break some artists block, I bought some cans of spray paint to play about in this medium. There’s only one way to go… Jump on in! Here’s my first attempt at a free hand knot in spray paint (on MDF).

Spray can Celtic Wave

Dabbling in this really makes me appreciate the skill it takes to produce a fluent crisp peice of work such as this (photograpphed on my recent trip to Athens):

Athens Graffiti

I suspected it took some practice… expect to see a few more of these in coming blogs!

More commissions are always welcome and any art you see on this site is available for sale, drop me a line!

Links:
haring.com Keith Haring Foundation Official Website

monstercolours.com Monster Colours Spray Can Vendor Website

I’ve just returned to North Devon after a superb trip to Greece.  10 days of great food, sunshine and adventure.  Of course there was no surf.  

I have a one track mind, despite the chances of surf being small I had made contact with the only surf school in Greece to establish I could hire a board if needs had been.  I had researched the spots and prepped Zoe that I might disappear on a mission.  I had found a waveheight model and wind forecast.  None of this was necessary because it was of course flat.

Street Art Tourist

The obsessive mind never stops.  Among the rich sensory experience of travel I was still spotting artworks with waves, photographing microbarrels and fantasizing about what the lush coastline could do given the right swell.

 

Micro Barrel, Kathisma Beach

I love Greece, it is a beautiful nation.  The people are friendly and open, the street art that spills out onto every surface is pocketed with real Gems.

 

Spot the wave ...

 

 

Athens Mural Dolphin

Aparrently Appollo turned up at the oracle at Delphi as a Dolphin, as you do.  This is where the name of the site originates and probably not why the artist chose to paint a robo-dolphin.  Tis still pretty cool!

 

Fish farm mural

 I liked the variety of neatness, and finishness of the art.  This mermaid is quite crude, but it gives colour to the metalwork it’s dawbed on.  

It’s also striking the mixture of Murals, Throw-ups, Tags, Pieces, Stencils… and messages from Political to Sport to Philosphical… “Feel Free Like us” for example.  Smug anarchists!

 

Splatter Mural, Athens

 

 

Evil Empire, Anticapitalist Stencil, Athens

 

Mural, Athens

Love the fly stencils on this too… a mixture of techniques and styles.

 

Time Tag, Acropolis, Athens

‘Time’, ‘Hermes’ and the comedically named ‘Buns’ seemed to be some of the most prolific Athens taggers I noticed.   This low angled, flared style is great.

 

Homage to Pink?

Is this the work of the influential early 80’s American Graffiti artist and tagger lady pink?  Doubtful.  Cute though.

 

Jarvis

Finally, the last one of the many I shot is this mix of stencils, postering, free spray can work and appear (to me) to be a portrait of sardonic skinny sheffieldian social commontator, and genius Jarvis Cocker!?   I guess you spot what you’re looking for!??

 

Links and references:

A reliable wave forcasting resource for the Mediterrreanian:

http://www.poseidon.hcmr.gr/waves_forecast.php?area_id=med#selectParameter

Information about breaks and surf spots:

http://www.wannasurf.com/spot/Europe/Greece/Ionian_Sea/index.html

Greeces only surf school / surf hire:

http://www.pargaweb.com/new/surfeng.asp

Contact: Giorgos Papandreou giosurf@otenet.gr

Athens surf and extreme sports shop (I couldn’t even find this on the map cos of the variability of translation for place names… but here it is anyway, on the web).

http://surfingreece.piczo.com/?cr=5

Lady Pink:

http://www.pinksmith.com/

Jarvis Cocker:

http://www.jarviscocker.net/

http://www.myspace.com/jarvspace

Happy new year to you!!

Here’s a picture from my Christmas Sketch Book….

It’s inspired by street art pieces and so I paintshopped this picture transforming it into a street art piece on a wrecked boat by the Seven Bretheren causeway, Barnstaple… more to come on this subject before long…

Paintshopped Piece

The North Winds are blowing and have pretty well kept me indoors this weekend. 

Zoe and I went to see the Abram Games (1914-96) retrospective at the Burton Art Gallery, Bideford, yesterday.  Games was an important British Graphic Designer, reinventing the British poster whilst working for the war effort.  It’s striking stuff, iconic and bold.  He had an adroit method for creating visual puns, and was a highly skilled life artist.  Games collected thousands of photos through his career, as reference material, but prided himself in redrawing everything so as to convey exactly what he wanted. 

My favorite thing about Abe Games was that he insisted on complete control of his projects, would submit a single final image to the client.  He greeted criticism by suggesting they hire another person for the job!

Also showing was the Annual Open Christmas Exhibition, our favorite piece was ‘The People Factory’ by Jay Luttman-Johnson.

Tuck In (Rough)

Inspired and spurred on this is a sketch I started while hanging around Atlantic Village, avoiding crimbo shopping :-)  and finished with a few beers last night :-) 

It’s based on a picture from ‘The Surfers Path’ of Alan Stokes tucking into a wave down in west Cornwall.  I chose the picture because of the way the wave is enveloping the surfer, embedding him into the wave which lends itself to embedding a Zoomorph into a knot.  This morning I photographed the sketch and coloured it on the pooter. 

FYI I used the following steps:

1. Split colour channel (to eliminate most of the construction lines from the image)
2. Adjust Brightness and contrast
3. Some touching up
4. Make selections and save to Alpha Channels
5. Coloured with large semi opaque brush strokes
6. Blurred

I like the Graffiti style, the bands are chunky and angular.  Where I’ve made my selections crudely it looks like scratch graff through the paint.  I want to do more with this image… watch this space..

Bideford Burton Art Gallery: http://www.burtonartgallery.co.uk/

Abram Games: http://www.abramgames.com/

Jay Luttman-Johnson: No reb reference available… if know please comment so I can add

Please note my art is for sale, 10% goes to SAS, please view my gallery to see more celtic surf art for sale.

Two things at the moment:

1. My face is puffed up like Marlon Brando. I had a wisdom tooth removed.  I have some time off work!
2. I’m scouring the web for links to my blog and to socialise.  This is a source of inspiration.

I came across a blog by Droog79 (reference below), it inspired me create a piece of Japanese Surf Art in the unplanned street style:

Three Zoomorphic Curls Sketch 1. 

I used Pro markers and aimed for bold lines, high contrast and lots of detail.  The surfers are like Jelly Babies, like a pop cult reference.  The soap suds are a reference to Graffiti writing.

What prompted me to create this…

Droogs art: awesome! For the UK it reminded me of

• ‘Supermundane’ an artist/illustrator I’d seen under that name (anything but run-of-the-mill)
• as well as album art of Mr Scruff.
• Generally it reminded me of unplanned drawings of the Japanese Street Style:  A great example of being Nobumasa Takahashi:

Check this out, an entire wall painted by Takahashi San from ideas given to him as he worked (spot the surfer heading towards the mouth of a giant head)

http://www.pingmag.jp/images/title/nobumasa_drawing.jpg”>

Source: Nobumasa Takahashi pingmag.jp
http://pingmag.jp/2006/02/08/nobumasa-takahashi-draws/

There’s some great art out there, surfing the web is a great way to find grassroots artists and big names which can open up new ideas to you.  Cheers for the blog Droog79 (check it out at http://www.droog79.blogspot.com/)

Also see:

• Supermundane: http://www.supermundane.com/
• Mr Scruff: http://www.mrscruff.com/
• Florence Manlik:  http://manlik.blogspot.com/
• Akira Yamaguchi: http://search.japantimes.co.jp/print/features/arts2005/fa20050105a1.htm (if anyone knows an official website please let me know!!)

You can also see a timelapse movie of my sketch:

Now I’m off to eat some more chicken soup :-/