Mat McIvor - Visual Artist

Love Fungus 2011

2011-07-14T07:25:00.000-07:00

Ok, here's the story. The band i was in 20 years ago have reformed for recently for a bit of a laugh, and for something else which i can't really speak about at the moment! We were called Love Fungus, and we played very short punky, pop, rock songs! I've just done some new artwork for our website, and here are a few images to show how things have developed, including the original poster i did for a gig all those years ago!

This is just a little taster of things to come, got loads of other ideas i want to do. But in the meantime, check out our website http://www.lovefungus.com/ for more information about what we're about to get up to! I'll keep you posted about what's going on as soon as i can reveal what we're going to be doing!

Mazey Day Wall Painting.

2011-06-28T02:34:00.000-07:00

Over the Golowan Festival weekend in Penzance, i was asked to help out my friend John Mackenzie to paint a wall, with a group of under 16's that he's been working with recently. John works for Addaction http://www.addaction.org.uk/ which is a UK based drug and alcohol treatment charity. The wall that we were going to paint, was outside the Addaction office in the Green Market Car Park in Penzance. I've worked with John before on other public art projects, and it's always great fun helping the young people translate their ideas onto a larger scale.

John had already been running some workshops with the group to generate ideas, and give them an introduction to some basics in spray painting. Their idea was to paint a large brain, and fill it with words that related to the effects that smoking marajuana has on the brain. We helped them draw the basic outline of the brain and the words a couple of days before the painting day.

On the day of painting, which was on Mazey Day itself, we used the wall around the corner from the brain mural as a public opinion wall. Before the young people arrived to help with painting, we sectioned the other wall up into blocks of colour, so that members of the public could have a go at spraying words about what they thought of the mural. This worked out pretty well, and everybody that had a go at painting really enjoyed themselves, and loved the fact that they were involved in painting a mural. Here's some more photos documenting the days progress.

All in all, everybody involved had a great day, and a bright, fun and colourful piece of work was produced by a very enthusiastic group of young people, and some fantastic members of the public. Big thanks to John Mackenzie, Carol Ashe and everyone else who got involved. Let's see if we can brighten some more walls up around Penzance!

My A'th Kar NQY / Harbour Wall Mural and Viral Advert.

2011-06-23T03:43:00.000-07:00

So, next week i start the long process of beginning another massive mural for the My A'th Kar NQY project. We have been commissioned to recreate our ill fated Burger King mural on the bottom part of a wall in Newquay Harbour. Above is a proposal for what the whole wall could look like, if we get funding to carry it on higher.

At the moment, we can only paint up to a certain height, but hopefully we will be able to complete the whole thing including the viewing platforms right at the top. The MAKN trade mark silhouettes will be included in the final design, with them sitting down on the benches so that you can sit next to them or even on them! I was supposed to start preparation of the wall this week, but due to our amazing British summer, it has been rained off.

As a side line to the mural project, MAKN have now branched out into merchandise to help raise awareness for the project, and to help fund more wonderful creative projects like the public art work. I was asked to help the small group of young people who are responsible for this part of the project, to help them develop ideas for a Viral Advert which they hope will help promote their MAKN t-shirts which they have designed.

I spent yesterday morning at the Excess Energy office http://www.excess-energy.co.uk/ with this group, developing a storyboard for their advert, which they will then be producing with the IT department at their school. We had a very productive session, which will hopefully help them on their way to advertising their wares.

Hopefully the weather will hold out for next week, as we have yet another mammoth painting session planned! I should have it all white washed and ready to go by then, so that we can start painting in the sun! A big thank you to Rhona @ Excess Energy and Dawn Melville for yesterday's session.

26 Flavours / Seaweed

2011-06-16T05:05:00.000-07:00

As part of the 26 Flavours Of Cornwall project, myself and writer Kieran Haynes were asked to produce a piece of work about seaweed. The project paired 26 writers with 26 designers, matched each team with an item of Cornish produce and challenged them to come up with pieces of art that combine words and design in the form of paper table-settings. There will then be an exhibition of the work at Trebah Garden.

To give ourselves a taste and a feel for seaweed, we were put in contact with Miles from Foodswild (http://www.foodswild.com/), who forages around the Cornish coastline for this rather tasty delicacy! Miles took myself and Kieran, my partner in crime for this project, down to Porthleven to jump around the rock pools and pick out some seaweed for our lunch!

After a morning of foraging, Miles had pointed out and picked 4 or 5 different types of seaweed. Some of which we even tried raw as we stood on the rocks! The rest were to be taken back to Miles' house, for him to show us several different ways of cooking up our pickings. You can have a look at our 26 Flavours page, where Kieran has jotted down some notes on our day in the rock pools http://www.26flavours.com/flavours/seaweed.

It was now our job to use our experience, and try to combine some imagery and words suitable for our ode to seaweed. Above is a first idea i had, taken from Kieran's blog post titled 'Monsters Of Rock (Pools)'. The idea then progressed to some kind of creature made of seaweed, looking up, and praising the moon and the lunar tides that dictate it's life! Below is a draft, close to the final image that was used for the final piece, minus Kieran's words. You'll be able to see the finished article at the show at Trebah Gardens!

Night Club Mural / Dynamite Hip Hop.

2011-05-18T07:22:00.001-07:00

I was asked a few weeks ago by my friends Paul and Charlie at Sound Night Club in Penzance, if i would like to have a go at doing some kind of painting in Room 2 of the club. This room is normally used for Dynamite Hip Hop nights, and they wanted a kind of urban feel going on. Initially they wanted something on the front of the bar, and on the front of the new DJ booth that was going to be installed.

My first idea was to do a design that involved a skyline silhoutte of Penzance that went around the front of the bar, and also went around the front of DJ booth (under construction in the photo above!) aswell. The guys wanted to keep the colours of the design in keeping with the colours of the club, ie black, grey and white. The also kind of wanted the design to go from the DJ booth and onto the wall too, so i started to have a go at some ideas which you can see below.

The skyline was now going to go on the wall next to the booth, and carry onto it too! I needed something else, so i decided to use the telegraph poles i used to use in old paintings, and the clouds that i've been doing in recent ones! I then decided i needed to come up with something that was in keeping with the musical connections to the venue, so i had a crack at a stack of old vintage speakers. So now i had the elements for the mural, all i needed to do was make them fit into the space and make it look good! Here's some photos below to show the evolution of the mural.

The design kind of took on a life of it's own, as i took it behind the booth aswell to make it look like the DJ is surrounded by speakers in an urban setting, even though the buildings are based on Penzance! A final touch for the finished mural was to use UV paint in an old school way, to put highlights on the speakers and the windows in the buildings as you can see from the photo below!

Now it just needs me to get some photos of the space in action at the next Dynamite Hip Hop night, which will feature UK Hip Hop artist Jehst! For more details of the gig follow this link http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=120952084646971. Look out for more Dynamite Hip Hop events coming up over the coming months here http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=226031831204&v=wall, including Mystro, Dr. Syntax, Genesis Elijah, and Del The Funky Homosapien, and another possibly major US Hip Hop artist! There'll also be some more artwork from myself to help promote the best Hip Hop promoters in the South West! Big shout outs to Tom Sweetman from 1Step Productions (http://www.1stepproductions.com/) who's responsible for getting some of these guys out on tour!

New Paintings.

2011-05-03T07:48:00.000-07:00

I've just recently hung a load of paintings in the Bakehouse Restaurant in Penzance. There's a mixture of old and new paintings including the first painting that i did in Cornwall 10 years ago, which you can see below!

The rest of the paintings are made up of ones that i have done since then, and a couple of new ones. It's nice to see the progression of my paintings over such a long period, and to see how much things have changed. Here's some images of the new paintings which i have featured before in previous blogs as 'work in progress'!

A big thank you to Rachael and Andy from the Bakehouse for letting me inflict my brightly coloured creations on their fine diners! http://www.bakehouserestaurant.co.uk/

My A'th Kar NQY, Police Station Mural.

2011-04-26T06:37:00.000-07:00

Last week i completed the final mural for the My A'th Kar NQY public art project. This finished mural will soon be installed on the central tower of Newquay Police Station. Myself and Kasha, one of the guys from the MAKN group painted this mural on 8, 8' x 4' panels. We carried out the painting on the roof of Burger King in Newquay in the beautiful sunshine of Easter week! Here's a few photos that kind of show the progress of how the painting went from bare panels on Monday to the finished panels stored on the top floor of Burger King on Saturday!

Akil The MC - Artwork And Tour Poster.

2011-04-05T04:55:00.001-07:00

Dynamite Hip Hop have been putting on some quality Hip Hop nights down here in Penzance, and i've done a few posters for them now! The latest one being for Akil the MC, who was back in town after a stomping gig last year. This time around i did a poster for the gig down here, and also a UK Tour poster too. The artwork for this has also been used on merch for Akil being sold on his tour!

For the Penzance gig, Akil was going to be supported by 4 resident Dynamite DJ's, who are all local guys that i know well. So i decided to do a poster which would involve the 4 local DJ's standing behind Akil. Here's a few images that show the progression from sketch to finished portrait of each DJ that would eventually be used on the poster.

Each one of the portraits were hand drawn, then touched up in Photoshop. It was quite a challenge to draw 4 people that you know, and try and make them look like them too!

So, on the poster then, you get Louis Vanhinsberg, Ali Walker, Paul Robbins and Paul Weschke done over in a McIvor style! The guys were quite pleased with the results, although Mr. Weschke did say he would have preferred me to make him look a bit more street, and a little less camp!

Sorry Paul, it's only slightly camp, but it still fitted in well with the other guys once they were all grouped together to flank the great Jurassic 5 MC. I hand drew logo for his name too, and then mashed everything together to make the final poster below.

Tom Sweetman from 1 Step Productions, the company who is handling Akil's UK Tour, then asked me to do a different version of the poster with just Akil on it, to use as the tour poster which could also be sold at shows across the UK. For this, i took out the local DJ's from the Penzance poster, and then changed the colouring of the poster, to still make it look like both posters were still relevant to each other.

It was also Toms birthday the day of the Penzance gig, so me and Charlie Quinn (Dynamite Hip Hop Head Honcho) decided to treat him to a present consisting of prints of posters for gigs he'd organised in Penzance as a memory of his adventures with 1 Step Productions! These included gigs by Akil and Souls Of Mischief. Nice little pressie for him to put on the walls of his office i reckon! There'll be more Dynamite / 1 Step posters from me coming soon!

My A'th Kar NQY Update.

2011-03-22T13:10:00.000-07:00

So, since we last spoke, the My A'th Kar NQY mural project has taken a few twists and turns! As you can see from the photo of me above, the Burger King mural got a lovely new paint job but after some great campaigning by the local community and the media, BK has kindly offered the project £3000 to recreate the mural somewhere else in Newquay. So we're now on the look out for a suitable site to reproduce our mural again!

While we're looking for a new site for the BK mural, we've been hard at work on the mural for the old Newquay Bus Station site. We spent a week last half term painting 70 panels for the site, with the help of some very willing and able local volunteers.

We had a mammoth task on our hands, paint 70 panels in 5 days with gloss paint! My very good friend, Natalie Smith, took time out from here studying in London to lend an invaluable helping hand, and Sarah Pym from RIO (Real Ideas Organisation) cleared her schedule for the week to get stuck in with us on the creative battlefront!

Over the course of the 5 days, we had between 40 - 50 volunteers come along to participate in creating a very public piece of artwork to share with the community. Everybody who came along were very focused on the task at hand, but still managed to have a bit of fun and enjoy themselves in a very relaxed and friendly creative working environment!

I can safely say that this project was one of the most intense, but ultimately the most fun and rewarding project that i've worked on for a while! There was a lot of pressure to organise and finish the job on such a tight schedule, but everybody involved pulled together and worked tirelessly to get the job done!

Gloss paint is bugger to paint with, especially on such a scale as this, and working with younger people who are prone to getting paint all over themselves! We had to put a lot of measures in place to make sure that the kids weren't going home to their parents covered in gloss paint!

As the week progressed, the paint pile just kept on growing and growing! Mixing all the colours for the panels was great fun. We went through a few tins of red, blue, yellow and white paint in order to achieve the desired effect!

Logistically this was a nightmare too, as we had to keep moving panels in and out of the school hall we were using in order to make sure each one had been drawn on and had 2 coats applied to it! But with a bit of jiggery pokery, we managed this rather large balancing act with minimum hassle!

The project also proved to be a great way to pass on handy tips on painting techniques to some very budding young artists! Lets just hope we inspired a few of the next generation to follow in our creative footsteps.

A massive thank you to everyone who came along and did such a wonderful job of painting, and for donating their valuable time to this project. Thanks also to Natalie Smith, Sarah Pym, Rhona Gardener & Excess Energy, and David Chadwick. I'd like to extend a big thank you to David Jones and i-Site, the company who provided us with the panels, and who installed them at the bus station site for us.

The panels are now all up and in position, so get yourselves down to Newquay to have a little look. Eventually there will be a little trial to follow around Newquay to the various murals with have been, and will be completed. More details of this will be released shortly, so keep your eyes peeled!

My A'th Kar NQY - Second Mural Update.

2011-02-11T02:38:00.000-08:00

I went to check out the site for the new My A'th Kar NQY mural on Wednesday, and as you can see from the photo above it's a pretty drab affair! The hoardings that have been erected are to cover up the old derelict bus station, and go all the way around ffom the public toilets to the derelict hotel at the back. There are 87 panels in total, and we're on a mission to paint them all in a week this half term!

Here's a few rough designs of what we're intending to paint on the hoardings. I've tried to keep it as simple and effective as possible, in order for the production of the panels to go as smoothly and as quickly as possible, while working with groups of young people who will be helping us with the process.

Hopefully we can still keep the message that the young people want to convey with this project, just by using the large text to spell out one of the phrases used in the first mural. I'm going to be using the silhouetted figures from the first mural, and the Police Station design too, keeping a theme running throughout the whole project.

I might use the figures as spaces between the words to break up the text, or just randomly insert them within the letters, not sure yet. Got a bit more drawing and designing to do before we actually start painting. Gotta get it right! What ever will appear on these hoardings, it's going to a whole lot brighter than what's already there!

Work In Progress - Lanyon Quoit.

2011-02-07T08:41:00.000-08:00

Another work in progress, this time going inland up to Lanyon Quoit, the famous Cornish Quoit on the road from Madron to Morvah. Above is the first sketch on A3 paper, and the following photos are the process of reproducing it onto canvas with Spray Paint, acrylic paint and Posca Pen.

Again, still some more work to be done, i'll keep you posted on it's progress!

My A'th Kar NQY - Second Mural

2011-02-07T06:19:00.000-08:00

The My A'th Kar NQY Public Art Project will be entering into it's next phase in the next few weeks, with work on a second mural about to take place in Newquay town centre. We've just scored a major coup in our campaign to blast away all Newquay eyesores. We've managed to secure one of the towns most hated sites, the dirty and dragged down old bus station!

This site is in the process of having hoardings put up all around it, to try and cover up this derelict space. Our job is to now decorate these hoardings with a mural that follows on from the first mural. I've already started working on some preliminary sketches for the design which will incorporate text into it, like the previous mural.

There are a total of 87 panels to transform into a message from the young people of Newquay, about how they feel about the place that they live, and about how they would like visitors and tourists to treat the town. It's going to be a massive team effort from myself and the group of youngsters i've been working with, and also members of the general public who will be donating their time for free to help transform a depressingly derelict area of Newquay!

The idea is to try and create a bright and fun piece of public art, that will carry a message to the general public. At the moment we're looking for a large school or church hall to paint the panels in, which will be then transported to the sight and installed. If there's anyone out there that can help us with such a large space, then get in touch please!

At least on this mural, i won't be having to climb up and down scaffolding, or be outside painting in the snow! It's always nice to be able to creative inside in the warm!

Work in Progress - Lands End Bridge.

2011-02-07T02:24:00.000-08:00

Just started work on some new paintings which i'm a little bit excited about! So throughout the whole series of paintings that i'm doing, i will be documenting their progress as they move along to completion. This first one is of a rickety old rope bridge that goes over the sea and cliffs down at Lands End. i've been working on the paintings with Spray Paint, acrylic and Posca Pens. Not finished yet, but there will be more photos as it progresses!

Flash Bulb Ears!

2011-02-03T12:25:00.001-08:00

A mate of mine asked me to do some kind of logo for him for his Photography website. I'm kind of in the early stages at the moment, but he wanted to incorporate an eyeball with a camera shutter, so below is what i've been playing around with for starters!

I tried using various parts of the camera, or even different bits of a photographers kit like tripods and umbrellas! It's kind of starting to develop into a character at the moment, but still needs a bit of refining.

Still a way to go yet, gotta get some more feedback from my mate for this last design that kinda looks like a bear! More to follow on this when there's more progress!

Private Commission From Start To Finish!

2011-01-21T06:24:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine asked me if i could do a Graffiti style piece for his teenage daughters birthday present! I said i could, and this is the process from start to finish. The piece is actually shaped from MDF, and then is spray painted and touched up with Posca Pens and acrylic paint. It's now sitting proudly on a young girls bedroom wall! Check out the photos, it's all pretty self explanatory and there's not a lot to read!

Finally Finished A Massive Painting!

2010-12-10T11:16:00.000-08:00

After many delays and hold ups, myself and Kasha Miller put the finishing touches to the My A'th Kar NQY mural in Newquay town centre last Friday! It's been a long old slog, with lots of obstacles being thrown in our way, but we finally finished!

Big thanks need to go out to my band of merry helpers who have braved the elements with me, to help produce this awesome piece of public art work! Drum roll please...... big love to Kasha Miller, Stevan Hyde, Becky Bryne, Andy Weir, Jourdan Brewer, Leigh Campion, Leanne Smale, David Britton and Chelsea.

We've had some late nights, some minor setbacks, and freezing conditions, but from the original idea of the project from the core group of youngsters (Kasha, Stevan, Becky, Jourdan and Spryo and Matt Casey who unfortunately didn't participate!) it's been a bit of a journey and mammoth effort to bring this mural to completion.

Safe to say, it has been very successful and extremely well received by the local people of Newquay. The amount of positive comments about the artwork and the message that it's originators wanted to say has been fantastic to say the least!

So many people have commented on how Newquay needs positive messages to lift it out of the general publics perception, that it is a destination for visitors with a lack of respect, and who don't drink responsibly. Everyone has said that they would like to see more of this kind of work to brighten up their home town, and to get a message across.

We have a new site at Newquay Police Station, which i have mentioned before, where we can hopefully carry on spreading a positive message about the town from the mouths of it's younger generation.

Myself and Tom Cowles from Excess Energy went to meet Sgt. Bob Murray yesterday to see which part of the station we have been allocated to decorate. It is a massive space, one that i hadn't anticipated, but it will look amazing once the decorated panels of artwork have been installed!

Me and the gang are going to be spending the next 2 weeks before Christmas getting as much painting done as possible, in order to get it up and into the public eye as soon as possible. It's an amazing opportunity for myself and the group to produce a piece of public art on a very unlikely building. How many other people do you know who have painted a Police Station without being nicked? I'll let you know how it goes, either from home or from a cell!

My A'th Kar NQY - Phase Four, 'Back In Action'!

2010-11-25T06:31:00.000-08:00

After a 6 week break, i'm 'Back In Action' on the My A'th Kar NQY Public Art Project. Yesterday was my first day back on the mural after being a full time carer for my missus after she had a hip operation. My first day back on the job just so happened to be one of the wettest Newquay has had this year, it was belting it down! Lucky enough, the site is undercover, but this didn't stop the rain from coming in sideways at me!

The main job that needed to be done yesterday, was to start drawing out the figures that will eventually populate the landscape of the mural, and the text that will evoke the voice of the young people of Newquay. I was very surprised to see that there was only one piece of 'unofficial' graffiti which had appeared over the last 6 weeks! Someone had written their name onto the sign post, and didn't really do a very good job of it.

The only other marks on the wall looked like someone had gone to the toilet on it, but upon further inspection found that someone had smashed a bottle of beer against it, which i found out by sitting in the broken glass while i was drawing! So with an ass full of glass, and smelling like a brewery, i proceeded with the drawing that needed to be done.

Everything apart from a couple of figures, is now in place for Saturdays painting session. The group of young people will be painting in the silhouetted figures, and around the text to make it stand out. This is of course weather permitting, as the country seems to be at the mercy of snow at the moment. It's been snowing on and off all day in Cornwall, but none of it has been sticking around by us! I hope people turn up on Saturday, but to be fair, this really isn't the weather to painting murals in!

Delays To The Planned Schedule.

2010-11-22T03:28:00.000-08:00

So, the My A'th Kar NQY Public Art Project has had a brief break due to some personal commitments that i had to attend to. I've been looking after my partner Melissa for the last 6 weeks, as she had to have a hip operation. It was pretty heavy surgery on her leg and hip, and i had to be her full time carer and look after. Have a look at the photo of her x-ray below!

I did a little design recently for a Christmas Card Competition for Shelter Box, my submission is below. It was a bit of a rush job, but i kind of like the image!

I've only just recently had chance to sort out my studio space too! I've been in there for about 4 months, but haven't had a chance to unpack things. I had to sort it out last week, as we had a new addition to the space in the shape of top photographer, Adam Gibbard! So the studio has now had all my crap properly unpacked into it and put away!

I'm now ready to get back onto the My A'th Kar NQY project, to take it to the conclusion of Phase 1, with Phase 2 hot on it's heels! We've been given a some wall space at Newquay Police Station to do another mural. I've done a design for it (below), but i think it will need a bit of redesigning, due to the allocated wall!

One problem we're going to encounter, is the fact that the wall space is 3 floors off the ground. The solution will be to produce the art work on large boards away from the site, and then attatch them to the building once finished.

We've got a couple of painting sessions coming up this week on the Burger King mural, in order to get it finished asap. It's going to be a bit nippy, but at least i'll have a warm top lip as i'm growing a moustache for the whole of November for the 'Movember' campaign. It's to help raise awareness about Prostate Cancer in men, and is a very worth will cause. If you feel like donating some money for a good cause while i look a bit creepy, then go here > http://uk.movember.com/mospace/354820/

Until the next time!

My A'th Kar NQY - Phase Three, A Spanner In The Works!

2010-10-28T07:17:00.000-07:00

So after our massive painting session, it was back to painting on the wall on my own. It's a pretty massive space to tackle by yourself, but it's nice to just crack on sometimes and plug your MP3 player in and blast out some music to help you work! It's also a way to avoid talking to the general public too when you have your headphones in! Now, i'm not saying i don't like the general public, it's just that they can hinder your progress by asking very stupid questions when you're working out in public!

The amount of people that came up to me while i was painting on the wall and asked me 'What you doing?' was unbelievable!

So, with the distractions of the daft general public foiled by the use of noise cancelling headphones, it was time to crack on and get the wall ready for yet another mass painting session. To get it to the right state, i needed to have all of the colour painted onto the wall, and 2 coats of it too. To help me with this tall order, i was lucky to have the help of another artist form Newquay called Chelsea. She had kindly volunteered to help out, so that she could gain some experience from working on a public art project on such a large scale.

For a couple of days, myself and Chelsea plodded on, colouring in the spaces and trying to stay within the lines! The day then arrived for the next painting session, everything was in place, and i was about to draw out the silhoutted figures for the arriving gang to paint.

We then encountered a slight hiccup in the project, that delayed us for a couple of days. Then everything got back on track and we managed to get the mural to what was almost a completed state, which can be seen in the photo below.

We've also been given another site to work on, at the local police station, which will be very interesting! I'm taking a little break from the project for some personal reasons, but will be back asap to crack on with a fantastic project!

My A'th Kar NQY - Phase Two, Painting By Numbers.

2010-10-26T15:58:00.000-07:00

So Phase 2 of the mural involved a mass painting by numbers session with a larger group of youngsters to help me than i expected! The main core of the group that i'd been working with consisted of about 5-6 people, but i was expecting a few more to turn up...... but i wasn't prepared for nearly 20!

With every body wanting to help out with the painting, i had to co ordinate everyone to make sure they all had a brush, were all in a position to paint, and that they all had the right colour paint for their particular part of the wall! I managed to mix the desired colours correctly, and under immense pressure!

Directing this group of children, teenagers and artists was great fun, and i think everyone involved in this short painting session really enjoyed themselves! It got a bit hectic and very messy to some extent, but the amount and quality of creativity achieved in such a short space of time was fantastic!

The next group painting session was scheduled to take place a week later, but we encountered a small problem which will become apparent in the following Blogs!

So until then, here's another one of the press shots. All of the publicity has been co ordinated by the lovely Rhona Gardiner and Fiona Egglestone at Excess Energy in Newquay.

My A'th Kar NQY - Phase One

2010-10-26T12:51:00.000-07:00

Ok, time to pick up the slack on the Blog! It's been a pretty full on couple of months regarding the My A'th Kar NQY project i've been working on, but Phase One of the mural painting part of the project has got underway. After a couple of photo opportunities with the local press (see cheesy photo above), I spent a good few days preparing the wall and white washing it, in readiness for drawing out the design.

Somehow, i've got to try and recreate the above design which was finally reached after weeks of workshops with the the group of youngsters. This was the initial design i came up with, which was passed by the local Council and Burger King.

Drawing out the design was very difficult, especially as the surface of the wall was made of brick! It was quite a large area, and took me a couple of days in total . It was made some what easier with the scaffold tower i was kindly lent by my mate Simon Taylor, who is one of the main organisers of The Masked Ball.

I think i must have gone through a least 20 pencils just sketching out the design, and then used a few marker pens to make sure it could be seen by the helpers who i was expecting to muck in and help me paint! I was looking forward to the help, as my wrist was feeling a bit knackered from the vibrations of drawing on a brick wall!

I had to improvise a bit too during the drawing process, due to the fact that i'd forgotten about the rather large Newquay Town Council notice board that is awkwardly positioned infront of the wall! I just had to jiggle things about a bit, in order for the composition of the mural to work.

So finally, with a very shaky wrist and a touch of snow blindness from staring at a white wall for so long, the design was up on the wall. Next up was Phase Two, which involved a painting by numbers session with a bigger group of youngsters than i expected!

Akil The MC / Jurassic 5

2010-09-14T06:58:00.000-07:00

My mate Charlie Quinn who has been promoting some great Hip Hop acts in Cornwall lately, asked me to do another poster for one of these big names. This time it was for a gig by Akil the MC who is one fifth of the mighty Jurassic 5. I love doing these posters, and this one was great fun to do. Here's a few photos of how it came about!

My A'th Kar NQY.

2010-09-14T06:32:00.001-07:00

So the workshops have been progressing for the My A'th Kar NQY public art project. We've now moved venue to an amazing space at the Chester Road Youth Centre in Newquay. Ideas for designs for murals have been coming thick and fast, and we even have a very possible site to start working on.

We've been developing an idea about using life size silhouettes of people on the wall. There's a whole theme about light and dark and opposites running throught the ideas at the moment. I've been getting the guys to use spray cans and stencils for a quick and easy way of producing ideas as images.

Things seem to be progressing nicely, and we now have a site to work on at Burger King in Newquay on 2 massive walls! Big thanks to James Curtis for all his help and support. More news and photos as things develop.

Private Commission.

2010-09-14T05:26:00.000-07:00

I was recently asked to do a private commission for someone, which was to be a present for their partners birthday. They specifically asked for a painting of Godrevy Lighthouse, and if possible, St. Ives Bay too. I managed to squeeze both of these landmarks into the design for the final piece, with a bit of creative license! Here's a series of photos showing it's development.

My A'th Kar NQY.

2010-09-14T04:40:00.000-07:00

My A'th Kar NQY is a public art project that i have become involved in over the last few months. My A'th Kar NQY is Cornish for I Love You Newquay, and it is a youth led project aiming to produce murals around Newquay reflecting the feelings of young people in the area.

My involvement in the project is to give workshops to the group and develop their ideas of what they would like to create as pieces of public art. We have been meeting in various locations around Newquay each week, and trying to develop concepts for sites around Newquay.

The guys have decided that they would like to address the issues of under age drinking and lack of respect that some people have when they come to Newquay. They would like to raise the profile of Newquay on a National level as a beautiful place to visit, that doesn't just offer drunken holidays! The project is backed by RIO (Real Ideas Organisation) and being helped by Excess Energy Communications in Newquay.

As the project progresses, there will be more updates about what is happening. A big thank you to the guys at Mount Wise Youth Centre for allowing us to use their space for the first workshops.

SIC Bike Designs.

2010-09-14T04:28:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine is starting a custom bike company over in St. Ives, and he's asked me to come up with some designs for a logo for him. I think the plan is for me to custom paint some of the frames that they produce too! Here's some of the logo designs below.

Got some adjustments to do to the one that they want, but i have to wait for Leo to get back from Romania before anything gets finalised.

Snap Shots From The Month Of June.

2010-07-20T09:38:00.001-07:00

June turned out to be a pretty hectic month! I helped organize an exhibition, moved to a new studio, went on a trip to London (for a 50th Birthday party that involved a boat trip on the Thames!), went to visit an old project a year down the line (The Hendra Mural Project in Truro, which is still looking awesome!), visited some old friends in Derby (congratulations to Phil and Sue Cope on their wedding! Great day, and great to see so many old faces from Uni!), landed a massive Public Art Project in Newquay (My A'th Kar NQY is the name of the project, more blogs to follow!), and managed to squeeze in a bit of work along the way too! Here's a few photos!

A New Studio.... Again!

2010-07-20T08:56:00.001-07:00

For the 3rd time in 2 years, i have once again had to move to a new studio space! I bloody hate moving, and it's amazing to see how much shit one person can hoard in such a small period of time! For the first time i have moved out of the centre of Penzance, and got myself a place out in the sticks.

I've not quite finished sorting the space out yet, but it's in some kind of workable order for now. I still need to set up my screen printing equipment, as i've got a couple of jobs lined up to print some t-shirts for a local surf shop and a local club night..... keep 'em peeled! Hopefully i will be able to stay in this place for longer than a year, although i'm going to working on site a lot for a very exciting project in the next 3 0r 4 months.

Lost Luggage at Glastonbury!

2010-07-20T08:09:00.000-07:00

If you were at Glastonbury this year, you may have stumbled across a very strange little experience late at night in the Shangri-La area. The Lost Luggage Department was a strange mix of performance and party, thrown together by my good friend Joe Gray. He'd constructed what was supposed to the lost luggage department of a Teleport company, and then proceeded to wreak havoc on the punters at Glasto with mischief and mayhem!

Joe asked me if i could come up with a design for him, which he could use as part of the performance. He'd actually built a teleport unit in the corner of this crazy set up, which they were going to magically transport members of the unsuspecting public to strange new worlds!

He wanted me to come up with some kind of in-flight safety card, similar to that which you get on a plane and are supposed to read before take off. Above is my attempt at such a safety card, depicting probable scenarios that could happen during the duration of your jouney in the Teleport machine! Created with hand drawn images, then touched up in Photoshop.

ART75

2010-07-20T03:10:00.000-07:00

In the middle of June i was asked to help out with an exhibition in Penzance called ART75. It was an exhibition to celebrate 75 years of Jubilee Pool, the iconic Lido in Penzance. The day was amazing, with 75 artists each showing a piece of work in one of the changing cubicles that line the walls of the pool.

It was a beautiful day, and there were so many people that turned out for a great little exhibition. There were even some synchronized swimming going on too! Above is the piece that i exhibited in the show, called 'This Town Eats It's Young', made with Spray Paint and Posca Pen on A3 paper. Big thanks to Richard Ballinger and Jesse Leroy-Smith for organizing the whole event!

House OF Flying Dragons!

2010-05-28T08:19:00.000-07:00

Finally, after the British weather decided to sort itself out, i managed to finish this mammoth project that i have been working on! After an epic 18 day spell of painting, the 'House Of Flying Dragons' has been completed!

It's been a gruelling battle against the elements, which also became a mental and physical battle to bring the project to an end. This has probably been the biggest job i have ever worked on by myself!

I love working on a large scale, but this has to be the largest that i have worked on! It was quite a daunting prospect at the start, but as with everything, once you throw yourself into a project it soon takes on a life of it's own and you kind of get taken along for the ride!

It was an amazing experience in the end, and i couldn't ask for a better location to work on a project like this. I'm hoping to produce some paintings based on the photos that i took over the 18 days of the surrounding landscape!

So now it's back to reality, and packing everything up in my studio to move to a new one! It's now the 3rd time in 2 years that i've moved, and hopefully won't be doing it for a while! So once i'm settled into the new place, i'll hopefully be able to crack on with some new paintings!

I've got a few more large scale projects in the pipeline, so any work i can get done inbetween these will be a bonus. I'll keep you posted on my movements! In a bit!

Rain Stopped Play.

2010-04-29T06:55:00.000-07:00

I've been working on this project now for 10 days, and so far the weather has been kind to me.... that is until today! I've had a great run at drawing and painting, but alas rain has now stopped play. Looks like i could be rained off until next week! I was on a proper roll aswell, and could have done with a few more dry days in order to complete the whole thing!

Here's a little update then to let you see how the dragons are progressing. The first one above the garage is nearly completed, just got a few things to touch up on it now. This one goes around onto the back of the house, which i've started painting too. It's been a bit of a ball ache having to climb up and down the scaffold to see what i've been doing!

I've now started to paint the second dragon on the other side of the house. This one is a lot bigger, probably about 35ft! You can see it creeping over the trees from up on the hill behind the house, gonna look ace when it's finished! Will probably set a few tongues wagging within the dog walking community too! I'll post up some more photos as soon as i've finished, and the scaffold's down!

View From The House On The Hill.

2010-04-16T11:26:00.000-07:00

I started work yesterday on a mural out at Crows-An-Wra on the way to Lands End. It's a bit of a mammoth task, as i'm painting 2 dragons, 1 either side of the house! The weather has been fantastic, very sunny, but bitterly cold, so i've been up the scaffold wrapped up like bloody Scott of the Antartic! The wind has been blowing a hell of a lot, and it's so far been a hairy experience.

So far, over the 2 days i've managed to draw out the image of 1 dragon on one side of the house, with it's tail and whiskers trailing round on to the back of the house. It's been hard work climbing up and down to the different levels, and getting positioned into the best place for drawing has been a challenge! Progress has been nice and steady, and a random selection of Fugazi, Justin Warfield, Battles, The Fall, Squarepusher, The Beastie Boys, Deftones, Flying Lotus, Autechre and Pop Will Eat Itself on shuffle have been keeping my going in the freezing wind!

So on Monday (weather permitting) it's onto the other side of the house to paint the next creature. Hopefully this won't be as harsh, as the sun comes round to that side of the house from about midday. Bloody lovely view from up there, as you can see from the photo above looking out over the Cornish landscape to St. Buryan. I'm looking forward to the next stage of painting the dragon, and seeing how it takes shape! I'll keep you posted!

Inspiration.

2010-03-30T07:00:00.000-07:00

Yesterday morning, i took full advantage of The Tate St. Ives offer of residents free admission in March. I went along to check out the latest exhibition there, which even my son has seen already! I'm a bit behind with things at the moment, but wanted to check out the work of Dexter Dalwood. His paintings deal with celebrity, historical events and figures either painted or in the shape of some perfectly formed collages.

I'm familiar with this British artists work, but i'd never seen any in the flesh. They were very powerful large canvases, full of energy and colour depicting various moments in history, portraits of creative people, and images of celebrity houses! The first image here is of The Bay Of Pigs, and the one above is of Sharon Tate's Living room. Other paintings represented The Death of David Kelly, Kurt Cobain's Greenhouse, Sid and Nancy's Chelsea Hotel Room, portraits of William Burroughs, Jeff Buckley and Ian Curtis and the Queen's, Bill Gates and Michael Jackson's bedrooms! A very inspirational show all round.

I've just found out that Dan Clowes is set to release a brand new graphic novel called Wilson. Clowes is best known for his cult graphic novel Ghost World, and is a screenwriter and illustrator for The New Yorker. Wilson is about an opinionated, divorced middle-aged loner who loves his dog and quite possibly no one else. After repeated attempts to engage with life he invariably falls back into his own pessimistic hell. Looking forward to this one!

Along the same lines is the Art of Jaime Hernandez book that came out recently, one that i've still yet to get but is at the top of my list. Hernandez is best known for his Love & Rockets comics, and this is a hard back book that documents stuff that has never seen before! File all of the above in inspirational artists!

Half Price Painting Sale!

2010-03-25T12:08:00.000-07:00

I've been trying to sort my studio recently, and trying to clear it out into some fit state to work in. Now you can call it a Spring Clean, but i'm now selling some of my old paintings off at half price to make some space! I've got a gallery of the available paintings up on my Facebook Fan Page, so feel free to have a look. I've sold a few already, and there's a few more that people are interested in. One of them may be winging it's way to Canada, which will probably cost more to send than it will to buy the painting! Once the studio is clear of clutter, i'm just gonna make some more paintings and make more of a mess!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=401185&id=100202500231

Chip Off The Old Block!

2010-03-23T12:35:00.000-07:00

My 9 year old son, Jack has been involved in a little art project of his own recently. He's spent the last 8 weeks on an Artist Experience course run by the Penzance Pirates Rugby Club's Learning Zone. He was chosen to be part of this project that allowed school children to see what it would be like to experience the life of an artist! From going to galleries, coming up with ideas, life drawing, sending work to be framed and even self promotion, they spent 1 day a week for 8 weeks on the project!

Today, the 8 week project culminated in the Artist Experience Exhibition in St. Ives at the Crypt Gallery. This must have been a wonderful experience for all were involved, i wish i could have done something like this at school! Big respect to John Watson from the Learning Zone, who organised the project with the participating schools and who taught the children too. What a fantastic project, and what a group of talented kids!

Getting Married In New York!

2010-03-23T12:23:00.001-07:00

Not me! I'm not getting married! I did this piece of work for my friends Sue and Phil from Derby, who are getting married in New York in May! Lucky buggers really, but i can't make it to the ceremony so i did them this for their wedding invitation. They're having a party back in Derby in June, so i'm going to that. I used to go to Uni there, and used to live with Sue who was on my Fine Art degree too! Really enjoyed doing this, and a bit of a departure for me too. Made with spray paint, acrylic paint and Posca pen on A3 paper.

Roof Painting In West Penwith!

2010-03-05T06:26:00.000-08:00

Went out to a location in West Penwith today with my mate Jason Sincock. He's doing a job on a house there which involves putting on a new roof. The existing roof has a painting of a Yin & Yang symbol, which apparently caused massive uproar from the locals when it was originally painted about 20 years ago!

Now the woman who owns the building would like it repainted once the new roof has been put on. So we went out there today to size up the job, unfortunately i didn't get to meet the woman who owns the house. Hopefully i'll get to speak to here next week and see if she'll be up for a few little tweaks to the design here and there!

Whatever happens, i just hope that we get the weather in the next 2 weeks so that the roof can be completed, and i can get up there and paint. Hopefully i won't get too distracted by the wonderful view out towards Lands End from the top of the house! Check it out in the photo above, what an amazing day it was today to go out and take photos! Let's hope we don't kick up as much fuss as the last time she had the roof painted!

More ClusterFunk!

2010-02-26T07:20:00.000-08:00

Another in the series of ClusterFunk posters! As you can see this one is Issue 4, and will hopefully carry on to be along lasting series of posters...... as long as the boys can keep on top of things, and keep on getting those gigs!

Hopefully they will be having a few up Bristol way, so my poster artwork will be traveling up the line a little bit!

This poster was hand drawn first, and then touched up in Photoshop...... i love touching things up!

New Work

2010-02-26T06:03:00.000-08:00

Just starting to sort out a load of new work at the moment. Got loads of photos to sift through as source material, and i've just started making some sketches of what i want to do.

Here's one of the first finished sketches of a view of Lands End, from just above the rope bridge that's there. It's just a basic idea at the moment of how i want these landscapes to look. i want some of them to look quite minimal with some silhouetted shapes thrown in!

This sketch was created using spray paint and Posca pen on A3 paper.

Take Me Away From The Wind And The Rain.

2010-02-26T05:40:00.000-08:00

Finally got this painting finished the other week, it had been sitting in the studio nearly finished for a while! Got it finished in time to put into Newlyn Gallery's Art Sale For Haiti exhibition.

I think the sale raised about £8000 in total, which all went to help the people of Haiti.

This painting was created using spray paint, acrylic paint and Posca pens on canvas.

Carnival of Love.

2010-02-23T04:59:00.000-08:00

This was a bit of an experiment with some of the shapes i've used in the past on my StreetGraf paintings, where i took peoples tags from around the streets and stylized them! Was trying to make it look like some of the shapes you might find at the fair ground, especially the waltzers!

This was made using spray paint and Posca Pen on card and paper.

I did it as a gift for my girlfriend for Valentine's Day! Think it worked quite well, might have to do a bit more experimenting with the shapes and the spray paint too. Not bad for a first go though!

Original Poster Art work.

2010-02-22T11:23:00.000-08:00

'Jesus, not more about this Souls of Mischief poster!'

Sorry guys, but there won't be much more as the gig is nearly upon us! I'm really excited about this poster, and about the gig too...... it's gonna be huge!

This is the original artwork for the poster, before i added any text, info or logos to it.

Again, it has been made using spray paint, acrylic and posca pens on A0 paper. I'll get it mounted shortly, ready for it to be framed by whoever eventually buys it!

Some Old Bits!

2010-02-22T10:26:00.000-08:00

These are some old bits of work that i've only really just got photographed properly! They were originally designs for the Jack's Cow project that i worked on last year.

These were the original designs that i had to submit to Newquay Airport to see if i was on the same wavelength as them!

In the end, i used the first image on one side of the cow, and another image of St. Michael's Mount for the other side.

These originals were made using Posca Pen and Acrylic Paint on A1 paper, which have since been mounted ready to be framed.

I didn't get a decent photo of the one of St. Michael's Mount, as i sold it to Andy and Rachael from the Bakehouse in Penzance!

Extra Bits!

2010-02-19T04:40:00.000-08:00

Just had to put some finishing touches to the Souls Of Mischief artwork. There's a flyer being produced now, so i had to do an extra bit of artwork for the back of the flyer.

I've been taking loads of photos recently, with a view to turning them into paintings. I'm really excited about some of them, and can't wait to get started on designing and painting these new images! I've got some experimenting to do with spray paint and composition, and then i can get cracking!

It's half term at the moment, so i've been at home with Jack a lot this week. Not got much done apart from playing on the Wii, and now my whole body aches! I was trying to read an article on artist Tim Biskup this morning in the latest Juxtapoze magazine, but got very distracted by the noise of Jack playing his Rabbids game! I should have just got up and gone out of the room really! Back to the studio next week, and sorting through photos for new paintings!

We're All Souls Of Mischief!

2010-02-01T07:00:00.000-08:00

So far, January has been a pretty hard month. The hardest thing about it has been not drinking! It's my own fault, i normally do the now customary January detox along with the rest of the world....... but this year i decided not to drink for 6 months! Sounds a bit extreme to most people, but i realized i've probably been drinking constantly for the last 21 years! This was a bit of a scary revelation to me, so i decided drastic action was called for! Now that January is over it doesn't seem that much of a task now, only 5 more months to go!

Before Christmas i was asked by my friend Charlie Quinn if i'd do a poster for the club that he works for in town. Charlie's taken the brave step of putting on some big live acts in our area, which could be a risk given the state of the club and live music scene in Penzance at this moment in time! The gig in question is for hip hop band, Souls Of Mischief, who had somewhat of a cult status in the early 90's. This is a pretty big gig for Penzance, although other promoters have been responsible for some very big gigs in the past.... most notably Dion Star & Music Evolution for putting on live acts such as Fat Fredd'y Drop, Bonobo, Alice Russell and AIM. Hopefully Charlie can inject a bit more passion and effort into live music in Cornwall and Penzance in particular. I agreed to do the poster for him, as i think Charlie deserves all the help he can get! Here is the result which i was pretty chuffed with. The actual art work is on A0 paper, and i've used Spray Paint, Acrylic and Posca Pens. Ive taken some Aztec imagery as a reference as the bands new album is called Montezuma's Revenge, which is a phrase used to describe an upset stomach in a foreign land.... a bit like Delhi Belly!

I only finished the poster on Friday, just in time to relish the arrival of my mate James from Bristol. James was coming down to stay for the weekend to get away from the city and get back to nature! He's a bit of a nature boy, loves rock climbing, snowboarding, mountain biking, is a tree sugreon and an all round Ray Mears kind of guy! On Saturday he took me and my son Jack down to Sennen near Lands End to do a spot of rock climbing. Jack is 9 years old, and has done a bit of rock climbing, and i dabbled a bit when i was at Uni too. We had to scramble down to where we were going to climb from, which was a long way down. It was a pretty sunny day, but it was bitterly cold too and as we were making our way down it even started hailing pretty heavily! Once in position James got all the ropes and harnesses ready for our ascent. He went up to the top first with the rope, and then sent it back down to us for Jack to start his climb. He was a bit scared at first, but like i said, he'd done it before at Lands End and also on a few rock walls too.

Once he got going though, there was no problem at all. Kids don't really have any fear at that age, i get more scared of him jumping around on the edge of a cliff! My turn came, and i have to admit i was a bit nervous a bit too! The sun had come back out, but about half way up my climb it started bloody hailing again while i was stuck to this rock hanging over the sea! At one point i couldn't feel the ends of my fingers, so much so, i had to stop for about 5 minutes to warm them up! It's a weird sensation when you're trying to grip onto the rocks when you can't feel your fingers, you just don't know if you've got a grip or not! I managed to drag my 15 stone frame to the top in the end, which is no mean feat! My whole body is aching now! It was worth it though, felt awesome to have been able to take Jack out to do stuff like that. Hopefully James is gonna be back down a bit more over the summer which means more climbing expeditions for me and Jack, and the weather will be a lot warmer so we won't loose our fingers to frost bite! Maybe then, after completing some more difficult climbs, i'll be able to sit down with James afterwards and have a nice cold pint! Roll on the summer!

Even More Fun In Your Lap!

2010-01-28T03:20:00.000-08:00

I love new technology, and i try and keep up with it as much as possible. I've recently joined the Mac brigade (not the flashers in dirty Macs!), and got myself an iMac which i'm totally in love with! It's turned into a love hate relationship though, as it is beginning to hinder my progress in the studio and keeping me away from painting! I'm slowly having to ween myself off my Mac addiction, but now the bastards have to bring out something else that i want! The iPad looks awesome, i just hope it can perform as well as it looks!

The iPad - watch more funny videos

Seriously, it does look good and but it doesn't run large applications like Photoshop, so if you want a creative tool i'd stick with the Macbook's! It's not going to be too long before we do catch up with the technologies that we only dreamed about and have seen in countless Sci Fi movies! I'm sure that Apple will be at the forefront of this technology, let's hope they can deliver what they're promising!

A Brief Update of Slackness

2010-01-21T05:52:00.000-08:00

Ok, i've been completely and utterly useless at updating this blog, but it's a new year and another resolution of mine was to keep on top of things! So to start is a brief update of everything that i've been up to since i posted my last blog about 9 months ago...... proper slackness!

The mural project that i was working on in Truro came and went very successfully! After several more workshops and a consultation day with the public, we eventually embarked on putting a pretty wild image on a huge wall in a public space! The design for it was based on some drawings of eyes that one of the youngsters from the group had come up with. I then came up with a design which we had to submit to the local Council. Basically the group wanted to show some transformation of a character to show their progression as troubled teenagers who had been battling with drink and drugs. The painting of the wall took about 6 days in total, but was probably completed over a period of 2 weeks due to the ever unpredictable British weather! Overall, the project was an amazing success and a huge benefit to everyone who was involved.

Next up for me was the Jack's Cow project. This involved a life size fibre glass cow, an airport and Posca Pens! The project was organised for Hall For Cornwall in Truro, and involved local businesses commissioning artists to customize a life size fibre glass cow. I was lucky enough to be invited by Newquay Airport to customize their cow, and so began the task of drawing and painting onto one of the hardest things i've ever had to paint! My design involved images that showed places in Cornwall, one being Newquay and the other being St. Michael's Mount. It was a great experience, and my cow was displayed outside Newquay Aiport for about 2 months. One of the best parts of the project was taking the finished cow on a photo shoot with photographer Steve Tanner. We took the cow to various locations in and around Penzance to get some very interesting photos. First location was my mate Pup's field in St. Buryan which was full of cows, and the next was on the beach in Marazion in front of St. Michael's Mount!

July i got asked to do a poster for a music festival that a group of friends were organising in September in Sennen. The event was called OceanDaze, and involved local bands and DJ's and a surf competition too. For this poster i carried on the tradition of customizing objects, and painted up an old surfboard that my friend Lloyd kindly donated. Once it was painted up, me and Mike Adams (one of the event organisers) went on a dawn photo shoot down to Sennen to get a photo of the board on top of the cliffs. This photo was then used for the backdrop of the poster to drop the text on top of. A nice little job, and a very messy weekend at the event was had by all. Looking forward to next years event now, it's going to be bigger and better than the first one.... and hopefully i'll be asked to do the next poster too! Got an awesome idea of what i want to paint on for the next one!

I moved to a new studio while all this was going on too. Nice little spot on Chapel Street in Penzance, ontop of the Regent Hotel. It's got amazing views over Mount's Bay looking out towards St. Michael's Mount, very inspirational indeed! Since i've been in here, i've been working on ideas for new paintings for myself and on various posters and artwork for other people. I've been working on a series of posters for some DJ friends going under the name of ClusterFunk. I've tried to make each poster follow on from the last and try and create a sense of identity for the guys. I've really enjoyed doing these posters, which have been made up of old and new images. I've also been spending some time playing with my new studio toy! I finally managed to get myself an iMac, and it's been distracting me ever since. I've got no time for distraction now, got lots of projects that i need to complete so that i can get on with more creating! I did manage to find time to grow a moustache for charity in November though, despite my claims that i don't have enough time to do things! There's always time to make yourself look like a twat to help other people less fortunate than you!

So that was a brief history of my slackness over the last 9 months or so, since the last time i could get off my arse and update this blog! What's next then? Hopefully there might be a few more mural projects over the summer, still looking into a couple of options that might mean me chasing people and doing a lot of leg work! But if they come off, they'll be worth it. I'm in the middle of doing a poster for a local Hip Hop promoter, he's managed to get Souls Of Mischief to come down to the end of the line that is Penzance.... and i'm doing a poster! I then have to crack on with some new paintings, i've got loads of photos to work from and loads of new ideas. Hopefully by July i should have the majority of work for me to be able to put on a new show somewhere, but it remains to be seen where! A new year, and some new challenges ahead.... lets hope i don't leave it so long to keep my blog up to date! Here's to slackness!

More Mural Workshop Activity!

2009-03-26T08:44:00.000-07:00

The Workshops roll on! As we get closer to our deadline, things are starting to slowly come together. This comes as some relief really, but there is still a hell of a long way to go!
We've kind of got some idea of content and style of how the piece will look. It's quite hard to visualize something so big, when we haven't really nailed down any definite images. But through a bit of coaxing, the guys in the group have given us dribbles of input as to what they'd like to see on the wall.

Wednesdays session helped us develop an idea for how part of the background will look. We had a longer session this time, and it seemed to help the group concentrate for longer and sink their teeth into more of a challenge. As the session's have progressed, the groups skills have developed more and more. Tom (Sutcliffe) has been giving them useful tips in spraycan techniques, and encouraging them to not be afraid of using them. This week we got them to use some great ink markers to do more detailed work over large blocks of colour.

It's really encouraging to see these guys really start to develop these skills, and to see them really enjoying the process of creating! I was beginning to feel like they weren't getting any enjoyment out of the sessions, but it's great to see them pushing themselves more as time goes on. We've had to push them a bit as to what the concept of the wall is going to be, but that's part of our job as artists to help them generatetheir ideas!

We have a Consultation Day coming up on Saturday in the Town Hall in Truro with the local residents to give their thoughts on the project, and to give us some ideas of their own! We've got to show them all of the stuff that we've produced so far, and to get them involved, only to a certain extent! Hopefully we won't get to much negative feed back from them, and hopefully we won't have to rethink the whole thing!

Let's just hope that a few people will turn up! We had an article in the West Briton Newspaper today, with a lovely photo of the group and some of their work behind them. The article was to advertise the fact that we are holding this Consultation Day, and to get people to come along. It's gonna be a long day, but it'll be worth it in the end to help with development of the final piece. You can check out the article here http://www.thisiscornwall.co.uk/truro/Art-Residents-voice-wanted/article-844506-detail/article.html

I've just noticed that they've got mine and Tom's names mixed up! Dunno what it is with the papers down here, they can never seem to get anything right! I am now Tom McIvor and Tom is Mat Sutcliffe, hahaha!

We've got 2 workshops next week, trying to double our output as the deadline looms! Might be able to post up some mock ups of ideas of the whole piece by then too. Check you later!

Mural Workshop - 2nd Session

2009-03-10T03:38:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we moved the workshop to the Dracaena Centre in Falmouth. It was a bit harder for the group to get to, so i wasn't expecting a big turn out! Surprisingly though, there were more in this group than the one in Truro last week.

Me and John Mackenzie, who works for Addaction and organised this whole project, picked up 2 lads from their social services house in Camborne. These 2 guys had been quite vocal in last weeks session about some of the things that they'd been getting up to, and about what trouble they'd been getting into! I don't think it's appropriate here to mention any incidents, but lets just say i'd started to wonder about who and what i'd got involved in! John had explained some of the kids backgrounds, so i knew what i'd agreed to, and to be honest no one had displayed any behavioural problems in last weeks workshop.

We got to the Dracaena Centre in Falmouth, with the possibilty of some problems arising between the 2 lads in the back of the car and some dodgy locals in the area! Luckily nothing arose, so we could get on with setting up the workshop in a large sports hall at the centre. I'd set the group a task last week to try and draw and develop a character for this session, and the results weren't that great! The one girl in the group who i'd had high hopes for, had done her task but she wasn't pleased with what she'd produced. Her drawing was technically very good, but wasn't really the kind of thing that i'd been looking for! I'm probably guilty of having a preconcieved idea of what we're trying to achieve, but i'm finding it hard to get any of their own ideas out of the group. At the moment i've just had to concentrate on showing them how to transfer their ideas from a small piece of paper, and putting it up large on a wall. This session was mainly an attempt to try and get them used to working on a bigger scale, and not just doing little doodles on an A4 piece of paper! I took a couple of designs that Beth had done of eyes, and showed the group that they don't have to be quite so literal in their way of thinking while working on ideas. Once i'd done an A3 drawing of what i wanted to put on the wall, i then showed the group how to scale their image and then transfer it onto the wall.

As we were working in a sports hall and couldn't paint directly onto the walls, we got them to transfer their drawings onto large sheets of paper. After an initial shaky start, the signs became far more encouraging as the group got to grips with working on a larger scale. Some of the guys started by transfering their drawings onto acetate, and then projecting them onto a wall with an OHP. Some of the other members of the group were a little braver, and even started off by drawing freehand. And some even used a mixture of projector and freehand! As an exercise in creating ideas for the final mural in Hendra, nothing was really achieved, which was slightly disappointing. I think this is just me worrying, as the time scale we have to finish a final design to submit to the council, is to to say the least rather tight! But as an exercise in improving the groups drawing skills and awarenes of scale, then we had achieved quite a bit. As with any session like this, as soon as you get everyone motivated and ready for action, time catches up with you and it's time to pack up and wind it down!

At the end of it, there were some nice pieces of work started. Next week, the guys get to have a spray can workshop with Tom Sutcliffe, which will be interesting to see what results come from that! The following week, me and Tom get together with them and see what ideas are possibly emerging. I think me and Tom are gonna have to give them a little bit more direction if there is going to be any input from them in the final piece. We've really got to try and give the council a really professional proposal which is simple and striking at the same time. We really are going to be up against it time wise, and we also have a consultation day with the local community at the end of the month too, to see what ideas they have about our proposal! I just love it when even more random factors are thrown into the equation!

John's arranging for a local paper to get a picture of the group taken in front of some of the images being produced from the workshops. One of the lads didn't seem too keen on this idea, and if one of his stories is correct about his antics, then i think it might be a good idea to keep his face out of the public eye! I don't think it would be a good idea to have irrate enemies coming down to the park where the site for the mural is, we've got enough obstacles in front of us without any any fights kicking off while i'm up a scaffold tower! And i don't think our budget will stretch to paying for police protection either! Haha, i don't think it will come to that, but you can't help daydreaming sometimes about worst case scenarios! I can just see it now, me and Tom half way up ladders while there's a turf war kicking off behind us!

I'm kind of gutted that i'm missing next weeks session, i wanted to see what colourful designs and antics come up! I just hope Tom can coax a little bit more out of them, and can keep himself out of trouble! Good luck mate!

2009-03-04T07:50:00.000-08:00

Hard work with the kids!

Yesterday i gave a workshop to a group of troubled teenagers about mural painting and character development!

I didn't really know what to expect from these guys, as it was my first time meeting them and didn't know anything of their backgrounds or problems. I'm doing these worshops with them to help them create some characters and get them to try and eventually paint them up large on a wall. All this is in preperation for a final piece which will include their designs on a public wall in Truro, which is the capital of Cornwall.

It was only a small group yesterday, but still heavy going! The group consisted of 15 - 17 year olds who were all living in Social Service Housing and who were all assigned a Care Worker who helped them with any problems. Their own particular problems ranged from armed robbery, assault with a weapon, teenage pregnancy and domestic violence! It took a while to explain exactly what we were trying to achieve, but once i'd shown them a few examples of the type of thing we were trying to achieve, they seemed to pretty keen and proceeded to crack on with doing some drawing and getting the ball rolling!

Listening to their stories while they were working kind of made me sad at the shit that they have to deal with at such a young age! These guys just seem to be getting lost in the system with no help from any family, just their care worker and the people in the houses that they've been placed in. It's going to be interesting to see how this group develops over the next few weeks, and how their creativeness develops too!

Next week, we're moving to a bigger venue where we can start translating some of their ideas to a larger scale. There's gonna be a few more kids coming along who couldn't make it this week, so there's going to be more unkown factors thrown into the mix! I'm just hoping we can get enough out of these kids to come up with a finish piece in time, the wall we will be painting on is 36 metres wide and 5 metres tall...... so we've got a lot of wall to fill.

Busy, busy, busy! I've just finished printing some shirts for a friends new skateboard company which is called Ekta. They're some sweet designs and the shirts look really cool. Printing some shirts for a friends horse riding school next, and then onto some of our own shirts for Rimo-to, which is my own clothing range!

Here's one of the new shirts, which is a new colour way of an old design! Got some proper new designs coming real soon!

On top of all that, i'm trying to do some new designs for my own paintings too! My studio's a bit of a mess at the moment with all the projects that are going on, so if i get any spare time i think i need a bit of a tidy up! What do you think?

Ok, i think i'd better get on with the big clean up! I'll keep you posted on how the workshops develop and how the kids progress with their skills!

Cheers for now, take it easy!

Mat x