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.