blog.NewTangled.com

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

I’ve been re-visiting some older designs, some of the very first knots that I created that took on the shapes of waves. I’m trying to use the computer to create attractive designs from these very simple sketches. Along the way, so far, these are what I’ve created.

The horizontal design makes me think of graphics from neo-psychedelic posters for raves in the 90s. Helterskelter, Flashback and Atomic Jam…. if you look closely it’s surprising how close this Kaleidoscope transformation has created a good knot from the original.

The vertical design makes me think of native american cherokee style feathered motifs, like some kind of space age red-indian artifact from an imagined civilization! But then I’ve been told before I have an over-active imagination!!

The Kalidoscope inspiration partly came from seeing pictures by North Devon artist Connor Wilson. His work can be seen in the Blue Groove Cafe in Croyde, which hosts an amazing giant mural depicting a perfect summers A-frame peak as spied through a break in a lush canopy. A surreal moon transformation floats in front of this scene… it has to be seen to be believed! The cafe also has many of his framed works including surreal style, automatic sketches and Mandalas (see resource here).

These Mandalas, or circle rotations, almost form celtic knot patterns (though close inspection shows the rules of interlacing, continuation etc are not followed). So roatating my simple designs produces these Celtic like patterns… which in themselfs I find inspiring. I want to take these computer generated patterns and come full circle to work over them by hand.

References:
http://conorwilson.co.uk/
www.mandalaproject.org
Blue Groove Cafe

Cheers!

Here are two more images produced from the sketch I posted in my blog a couple of days ago… the palette is from Colourlovers and is called ’sandywater’ … it instantly made me think of those dredging low tide waves churning the sand up, colouring the waves.

The original Palette is here:
www.colourlovers.com/palette/726905/sandywater

Hope you like this… it’s a single line and I was working on the principles of angular vectors to show the structure of the wave. Also this represents it’s movement.

The original sketch included a surfer in the tube, removing him has left an interlacing error as originally it was intended that he would be entwined with the wave…. perhaps you can spot the switch in the pattern? To me this switch doesn’t matter, it’s been found in ancient master pieces, works completed by apprentices and occasionally become unavoidable in some designs. That’s what I’m sticking to anyway!!

The paint drips effect was created with a picture tube I made in Paintshop.

Any questions just ask…

Also note this painting is available for sale, please contact me for details or refer to my price list pricelist. Cheers!

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

Muddy waves, sunny days. Inspired by a nice session on Croyde this afternoon, sun shining, 7 degrees, 2-3foot clean ish and mellow. Grey clouds lashing over lundy and a bright red sunset fuzz over heartland. Foam on the faces and powder blue skies.

http://www.colourlovers.com/palette/624926/Devons_muddy_waves

Sun setting at 4.30pm over Hartland head, grey rain smudged over lundy. 7 degrees. 3ft and clean on Croyde. Lovely :-)

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.

Negative sketch of Teahupoo barrel view celtic knotwork

Here’s a sketch I’ve been working on over the last week or so, it’s inspired by a photo by Jon Frank of the monster wave at Teahupoo.  It’s taken from inside the giant tube Mick Fanning is racing away from.  It’s a pretty awesome shot, I love the way the wave is curling over and completely joins up with the spray from Fanning board.  I think the shot was taken up by Rip Curl or Billabong for an advert.

The knot in this sketch wasn’t really finalised, I didn’t resolve it to be continuouse or a single line, I really just wanted to try out a few different ideas the photo gave me. 

I’ve played with scale on the lines to give perspective and depth.  The sea heading off to the horizon I was playing with an arbitrary pattern when I made the network for the knot and then chose a rule for the crossing over points (which way the knot continued to lead or break).  The result looks quite computer generated, a bit like game graphics from the 80’s I think.  

I played about with the shot in paint shop pro adjusting the hue and saturation, lightness, contrast and then making the image negative.  The sketch original was done in coloured fine-liners.  You can see the steps I took in the sketch:

• Concept sketch
• Grid
• Network
• Line Fattening

Mick Fanning, Teahupoo, by Jon Frank

 I came across this photo in the Surfers Path Magazine, you can see more Jon Frank images here:

http://surferspath.com/photographer-folios/image_full/253/

Favorite quote from the artical:

“Most opportunities slip quickly away, but occasionally I will trap one in my little black box to keep.”

Best shot in the Folio is (in my humble opinion):

Silver Linings, Tahiti, by Jon Frank

It looks wild and stormy, I get the feeling the surfers alone in the elements.  It looks like a huge arena to be lost in!  Hmmm how much is a flight to Tahiti??  Still, I think this appeals because it invokes a feeling of what it’s like to be alone in a big stormy surf area, like a less than perfect but big ish day a Saunton, when there’s not many people out and you find yourself all alone. 

Like Tahiti, but cold, without the power and mushy.  Ok so not that much like Tahiti.

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 :-/