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

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.