RVCA's HQ

RETNA / The Mac from RVCA on Vimeo.

http://www.rvca.com/

Was browsing the internet the yesterday and found this video. I think this is one of the most impressive wall pieces I've ever seen, its a collaborative piece between RETNA and THE MAC. Its been painted onto the side of the RVCA HQ. RVCA claim to be: "Transcending the boundaries of traditional action sports apparel, RVCA is a design-driven lifestyle brand free from passing trends." not too sure what to make of them myself but I think this piece is great. Nice iconography, good photo realism, good choice of colour and i love the patterns used. All round this is a decent piece.

David Choe - An Introduction by KQED (From 2004)

http://www.davidchoe.com/

Wow quite a touching video to be honest. slightly clique d:   brilliant street artist goes to jail in a foreign prison and finds god. This shows some of David Choes work, a brilliant artist who works in a very fast and erratic manner. impressive spray work, Choes is now working in many different medias. recent work doesn't appear to be as conflicted as he was back in 2004. Great to see he has sorted himself out.

MuTATE britain

 http://mutatebritain.wordpress.com/

Mutate Britain has been going on all this month and ends soon, here is a clip from the show. all the information about it can be found on the above link. I really like the idea of this, this is the type of event that shows how graffiti/street art is changing. It is evolving into something better than it once was. Its no longer about the spray can and just covering everything you can find. instead it is an art style in its own right and uses multiple technics to present what it is showing.

Evan Roth: Digital Blackbook (Graffiti Analysis 2.0) Sessions

Graffiti Analysis 2.0 (Digital Blackbook) - BLK River (Vienna) from Evan Roth on Vimeo.

http://evan-roth.com/

This software looks pretty impressive to me, motion tracks what you are doing and then you can add effects etc on too what you are writing. think this video pretty much speaks for itself.

"Thought you might enjoy some of the pre-release footage of the Digital Blackbook (Graffiti Analysis 2.0) sessions from the BLK River Festival last week in Vienna. I'm working on developing an open data base of motion capture graffiti data from writers all over the world, should be released publicly within the next 4 weeks." Evan Roth

The NYSAT Project

http://www.publicadcampaign.com/

The New York Steet Advertising Takeover has very strong views on the illegal advertising that is plastered up in the middle of city centers. They take it upon themselves to cover up and replace such adverts with original pieces of artwork. I like this project for two reasons, one, this has a very strong spirit about it that stands tall with it morals held high. Also the project is well executed with decent artists helping out to replace the advertising.

I will be keeping a close eye on this campaign.

Mike Perry

Jim Stoten and Mike Perry For Dwell Magazine from Michael Perry on Vimeo.

http://www.mikeperrystudio.com

Mike Perry is personally one of my favourite illustrators, his style has elements of naivety to it and can feel very raw, yet there is a very clean feel to it by means of colour and finish. This is portrayed by how he uses his hand drawn wobbly lines and spruces them up digitally. Every piece he produces holds his fingerprint.


I purchased one of his books named "Hand Job", this contains a collection of hand drawn typography from many artists such as: Kindra Murphy, Holly Hopkinson, Luke Ramsey, Stefan Marx and many more. What makes this book appealing is that all of the artists have very different styles, giving you different perceptions on typography. I have constantly used this book for inspiration with hand drawing my fonts, it contains everything in it you could ask for. It is quite a large book at 256 pages and amazingly cheap for it's size (currenlty £14.39 on amazon, time of post).

Mike Perry is another top artist I would highly recommend to anyone delving into illustration and his book is brilliant for hand drawn typography.

Amose

http://amose.free.fr/

Amose is a french graphic artist who works in his home town of Lille. He is a member of the Mercourocrom Collective along with Spher, Erone, Nada and Spear. Together they work on graffiti, illustration, screen prints and graphic design.

Amose's work takes on many forms from walls to canvas and even digital work and can be easily recognised due to his unusual human forms. small heads with tiny beady eyes and unusual perspectives. his faces seem confused and remorseful, with a feeling of loneliness. His bodies are imposing and strong and almost robotic in design yet have a very human feel to them.

 

This is an artist I find to be very inspiring, his work unique in style and has something for everyone to appreciate, with much more than what is here.

I always advise Amose to any alternative illustrator.

Bomb it: The Movie

http://www.babelgum.com

This is a documentary film on the life of graffiti, right up to modern day. standing at 1 hour 33 minutes I found this film was hard to follow at first, i wasn't too fond of the gangster taggers that dominated the first quarter. I mostly don't agree with what they say but they are also too aggressive as far as i'm concerned.

The rest of the film though presents great views and amazing pieces from every corner of the world. this includes famous artists such as Os Gemeos, Pez and Blek le Rat.

This doesn't just talk about the good points of graffiti, it also tells us the dark side of graffiti , the gang culture, the crime and even the deaths caused by graffiti.

I found this film to be a high quality, informative and certainly worth a watch to anyone interested in finding out more about graffiti.

work in progress almost finnished, copyright 09

Chris O'Shea's Hand From Above

Hand from Above from Chris O'Shea on Vimeo.

This was up all last month on the main screen in clayton square, liverpool. I passed it by at first unknowingly,  I heard an unusual sound and looked up to see a video of myself being tickled by a giant hand, one of the single most surreal experiences to happen to me yet. It took a few seconds before i figured out what was happening and then i found myself intrigued by the video.

"Chris O'Shea's Hand From Above encourages us to question our normal routine when we often find ourselves rushing from one destination to another. Inspired by Land of the Giants and Goliath, we are reminded of mythical stories by mischievously unleashing a giant hand from the BBC Big Screen. Passers by will be playfully transformed. What if humans weren’t on top of the food chain?

Unsuspecting pedestrians will be tickled, stretched, flicked or removed entirely in real-time by a giant deity.

Hand from Above is a joint co-commission between FACT: Foundation for Art & Creative Technology and Liverpool City Council for BBC Big Screen Liverpool and the Live Sites Network. It premiered during the inaugural Abandon Normal Devices Festival."

work in progress part 3, copyright 09

Sweatshoppe

SWEATSHOPPE, 4spots, the landing extras from SWEATSHOPPE on Vimeo.

"Multimedia performers Sweatshoppe have been wheat pasting buildings with moving images all over New York. Mapping video projections to LED-lit paint rollers, Sweatshoppe lay their projections on a surface, paint-stroke by paint stroke. They call new digital performance style "Video Painting".

How it works: The software controlling the video was written in Max. The paint roller does not use any sort of paint, it simply contains green LEDs. The software tracks the color green and outputs the x y position which are sent to drawing commands and the strokes are textured with video.

Sweatshoppe is video artists Bruno Levy and Blake Shaw. They plan on eventually releasing the software, but only after it is much more refined, buffed up with features and is user-friendly."

A Trip for Inspiration: Part 1

I recently took a trip to the Walker Art Gallery and the Tate Liverpool for some general inspiration. apart from getting told off for taking pictures I managed to see some interesting things.

The Tate has some very interesting sculptures as a part of the DLA Piper Series: This Is Sculpture, these two especially took my interest.

 (left) This piece first interested me because one of my friends had done something similar not to long ago. Then when I took time to look at it properly I noticed the quality of the painting of the clouds upon the face, this is quite a strong piece without being to aggressive, and yet the notion of there being a head mounted on the wall is actually quite aggressive.

(right) The way the light bounces off the walls gives quite a air of awe to this piece and the shape of a cross instantly connects this piece with an other worldly aura. still unsure about the yellow paint it was bouncing off, but over all i felt this piece as simple as it is has good standing and holds a distinctive feeling to it.

Also part of this; is A room made up by Wayne & Jack Hemingway as a huge dancefloor.  For this room you take some headphones in and listen to music whilst walking past sculpture with discoballs and mirrors surrounding. This I felt really did bring the sculptures to life, definatly lets you look at the pieces in a new way and i felt like it was done in a way that worked.  The only problem i had with this room was i didn't see any pieces i havn't seen before, i felt the selection of the pieces was a little uninspired.

Jesus 2000

JESUS2000 from jesus 2000 on Vimeo.

This video although blasphemes, and i apologise to anyone who may be offended, this is a high quality animation. imaginative to say the least, i personally like the angel monkeys. Its interesting how there is a constant use of shapes you would naturally assosiate with religion such as the long spike topped windows. the only bit i didn't like was talking it into live action, i felt this acctually took away from the stylised view they had given during the rest of the animation.

work in progress part 2, copyright 09

 

Milton Glaser

MILTON GLASER DRAWS & LECTURES from C. Coy on Vimeo.

Milton Glaser one of the famous illustrators known for his work for Push Pin Studios, talks about drawing.

I never really thought about it until but Milton brings up some interesting points, for starters, the idea that you don't really concentrate on what ever it is your looking at until you draw it. this is extremely true and i do believe changes the way you look at things once you have drawn them. For example if you was to draw a simple chair it no longer becomes a simple chair to the artist as your start to understand the process it has gone though to come to this point. You see the joints, you understand how it was put together, you begin to think about its texture and what it is made of. from that point onwards it is no longer a simple chair it is an object on a journey and you understand it more.

Another point made by Milton is that in order to draw expressively  you must first lean to draw accurately. this is a process i have gone through and whilst i was young i could never understand why i couldn't draw expressively, but once i began to take lessons on drawing accurately the rest all fell into place and now it comes extremely naturally. I have found this to be an interesting talk that has held some interesting thought processes to it.

work in progress, copyright 09

Wujoco

http://www.wujoco.blogspot.com/

This animation studio has a few select, decent animations floating about at the moment. This one is my personal favorite but the one that first got my attention is a trailer for a film in production: http://www.angelvitamina.com/ the quality on this one is much better and looks very interesting, i will be keeping a close eye on this one.

Odosketch

http://sketch.odopod.com/

Found this website a few weeks ago, this is definately a very nice site to have on your bookmarks. The general idea is everyone draws a sketch of whatever they want and admin feature the best ones on the front page. Now I know that sounds a bit simple and uninteresting but the unique thing about this site is that as you draw your sketch using the websites own software all of your marks are saved.  All your mistakes and everything you do is recorded and becomes a video for the general public to watch.

A good example of this is http://www.sketch.odopod.com/sketches/108830

This is an interesting programme to watch but is actually quite limiting. There are a select few marks you are allowed to make and I would definately recommend using a tablet to draw with as the mouse can be quite restricting.

Lost

I personally love my stickers and this is a brilliant example of how a simple idea can spiral into something wonderful

Mameshiba

Saw this the other day, its completely weird yet hilariously funny. i like how simple it is and think im actually learning something when i'm watching these.