No need to send out a search party

Its been a very long time since I have posted anything on the DP blog site. So it's time I have brought every one up to speed. The last 8 months have been up and down for me. I was made redundant from my designers job. A lot of my time was spent trying to find a new job but I did try and carry on my art.

With more time on my hands I wanted to loosen up my art. The way I think things through, the way I paint and draw I wanted to re-invent everything. With the supplies I had, I went to work. For a while I had been playing around with faces but it needed something more then just a single drawn face on a canvas. What I came up with was these for images. Drawn with a paint pen on thick card paper. I think that it has a certain style towards them. I don't know where I'm heading with this style but I'm liking it more everyday.

I looked up similar artists like David Choe (www.davidchoe.com). He came up with a method of drawing a face using to spray cans in each hand. The results are pretty amazing. Of course they wound't be fully coloured master pieces but none the less the style of them are a sight to see.

With nothing to do during the day sept to sit around, watch crappy day time tv and draw or even to boot up the old ps3. I wanted to keep active and not fall behind in shows, so I set out on the net to see what i could enter.

I remember around each summer theres a project to do with sketch book in America. After an hour of searching online I came across The Sketchbook Project. The idea behind it is that you get sent a random theme for your sketch book and a small sketchbook is sent to you. As well there were some simple set of rules to follow. You have to use the sketchbook provided and you can not over exceed the dimensions of the sketchbook either. You may add pages to the book if you wish.
My theme that i was sent was timetravel. I had all these visions of things that I could draw. Some relating to tv programs like LOST and Quantum Leap or books like The Dark tower. After 4 weeks and only getting trough 8 pages of the book I got bored with it. The whole thing, hated time travel by this time so I went on the Art co-op website to get some inspiration. See what other people are doing.

It seems the rules went out of the window. I was looking through of already submissions and there where people just using other sketchbooks and other methods to get their art in to the show. But the organisers didn't mind either. The biggest piss take of one tho was that someone sent in a homemade wooden box and filled it with photographs of clouds. So thought well this is a piss take now So I am going to do my own thing but stay with the rules just in case.

I ripped out every page sept for the covers and replaced the paper in the sketchbook with a thick paper that was A3. The sketchbook given was only A5. I filled each page with a A3 painting but by this time it wasn't anything to do with but anything that came in to my head. When I was finished I was able to fold the pages down in to the book. It made it the size of a brick but I didn't care.

The project will be going to all of the major American cities (New York, Chicago etc you get the idea) but as well London, Melbourne and Toronto. Tho this isn't a solo show or a gallery show of selected artists I'm glad I did enter it. Just for the fact my work is been shown in major cities in other countries.

Once the tour is finished the art work will be in a permanent display in Brooklyn Museum of Art.

During summer I wanted to dive in to the abstract work and wanted to see what I would come out with. I would get a canvas and would layer paint over each other. I would then swipe away layers of the paint away using a screen print swiper.

Like I said in a previous post I came away from this experiment with 4 paintings that I liked above the rest. Two of them was in the Winter blues 2011 Gallery show in liverpool and the other two ("Apox" below and "Obsidian" bottom) are the others that I feel strongly about.


So with summer and a sense of adventure. My friend and fellow artist Sam (Allofusarelost), I took to the street on what could we find. It was a spare of the moment adventure and armed with a bottle watered down poster paint and some wheat pastes we set out on our cruisers.
We found a park and ride that have not been use for years and a rail way bridge. The bridge seems to be a hot spot for graffiti. You have your everyday crappy Blar Blar waz ere crap but there was also some decent street art there. People had been there with rollers and brushers to create their art.
To see what else I have been doing in the last 8 months I will be posting more posts on here and my tumblr. www.zephyrbaby.tumblr.com