A surfing tribute to Keith Haring
Wednesday, June 24th, 2009I 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
