Night Club Mural / Dynamite Hip Hop.

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!

Akil The MC - Artwork And Tour Poster.

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!

Akil The MC / Jurassic 5

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!

We're All Souls Of Mischief!

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!