Happy Christmas One and All...!

Clifton Suspension Bridge Canvas

12 Days Prep...

12 Days Canvas

Clifton Suspension Bridge painting - 150cm x 100cm, acrylic, spraypaint and emulsion on canvas.






















A preview from the 12 Days of Xmas exhibition on Stokes Croft, Bristol.
Opens this Friday at 7pm...

North Street Print

Available from today at Let Them Hang!

Approx. 450mm x 640mm
Printed on heavyweight black Lustralux paper
Edition of 60, signed and numbered by the artist

Print Making at Screen One

A few photographs from yesterdays 5 stage print making session...

1. Let Them Hang HQ - Master print maker Paul lays down the initial white layer for all the colours to sit on top of

2. White ink on black lustralux paper drys on the print rack

3. Paul pulls the second layer - Red

4. Red on top of white

5. The third layer, yellow, is added and moved over to the drying rack

6. The blue layer is lined up and added

A fifth layer of purple was also added which really set the whole image off...

A picture of the finished image and some details uploaded very soon!

Back to Print

OK, so I have been somewhat sidetracked from making photograffiti images and venturing into the world of screen printing - But with good reason!

So for anyone who has only just come across my blog, I have been documenting the process of turning one of my night-photographs into a screen print, and here is a short recap...

1. The original photograph

2. The painted graphic version painted at Upfest at the Tobacco factory (Oct 2008)

3. The beginning of the printmaking process - Creating the background white first layer. Acrylic paint on black card A2 size

4. Four different acetate sheets, each painted with individual colours, one sheet for each different colour layer

5. A1 scanner digitalising the painted coloured layers

We then made the screens, and things were put on hold whilst I became a dad.

But today we got it together, and made the print...!

Photographs uploaded here tomorrow, and the print will be available from Let Them Hang on Friday 6th Dec.

12 Days of Xmas

Following the success of last year's 12 Days exhibition, we're gonna do it all again!

I came into last years event pretty late, so am well glad to be able to have a week or two to put some work together for this show. I have a couple of nice ideas brewing...

:-)

A great line up mixing a load of local artists with a lot from out of town and further afield too, this promises to be another awesome show. Check it out here

Book Signing

Many thanks to Mr FLX for my copy of his Children of the Can book...

Last night at The Bell was a great little meet up for the artists involved in making the book to meet up, grab a copy and run around the place looking like excited little children on a treasure hunt, collecting tags from as many of the heads who turned up as possible...

I think i got y'all!

A Doting Dad

Wednesday 19th November 2008 at 7.23pm my life changed forever...

Toby James arrived and made me the happiest guy around. Thank you Laura x

So, all of a sudden painting and making prints has become totally insignificant, and I even forgot that I turn 30 tomorrow. The only photography going on around here at the moment features this little man in the arms of family and friends - but that's cool with me.

More art related stuff here as soon as I get the smug grin off of my face...
:-)

Children of the Can

OK, so you have probably heard all about Felix 'FLX' Braun's book, Children of the Can - 25 Years of Bristol Graffiti by now, but having just had the pleasure of a preview i have to tell y'all... It is awesome.

I was more than happy to help Felix out with this book and gave him a good chunk of the Bristol graffiti photos i have collected over the 15 or so years i have been snapping away in this city - and it is great to see how many of those flicks made it into the publication.

A book about the past and present of Bristol graff has been talked about by writers for as long as I have been painting - I have even thought about putting something together myself, although thinking about it was honestly as far as i ever got...
In my opinion, it needed someone who has the patience to collect and collate all the photos, carefully write up all the text, and deal with the huge task of piecing it all together - as well as mix with all the writers from both the early days in the '80's through to the hardcore boys who are keeping the illegal side alive and kicking today. And I couldn't think of anyone to handle the job better than Mr FLX. I know how much time, effort and thought he put into producing this book and that dedication has certainly paid off. So good on ya mate - you did what we have all talked about doing for so long, and fully did it justice too. I tip my purple beanie in your direction...

After dropping in on FLX for a quick cuppa, I left two hours later - having read not a bit of text, only scanning the photos. I cant wait to loose a few more hours in the text.

Go and grab yourself a copy here. Highy recommended!

Quote of the Day...

"Problems are opportunities and there are lots of them around".

I overheard someone say this quote today and it made me smile

:-)

Making Screens

Popped past Screen One this afternoon just in time to catch the boys preparing the screens ready for printing...

As soon as the paper we are printing onto arrives, we're ready to roll...!

Prints and Inks

Small update on the screenprint...

Layers turned into grayscale and printed out onto A2 acetate.

Colour matched inks to original Belton spray paints used to paint the street piece.

More updates soon - Hoping to make the actual screens this afternoon...

Above the Portway

A few Sunday evening snaps of the Clifton Suspension Bridge. Strong winds made long exposures a bit of a nightmare but my flimsy tripod held up enough to capture a couple of nice images...

Analogue Layers > Digital Layers

Having to tone down my eagerness for getting on with playing around with paper and silk-screens and mixing up coloured inks, took some serious patience yesterday… especially when working on a 2 gigabyte file in Photoshop.
The Mac did its job excellently though, as did the boys at Screen One, helping to tidy up the scans and prepare each layer ready for making the individual screens - as well as providing a lousy cup of tea…
:-)

Scanning

This project has turned into an interesting mix of new digital technology - digital photography, Adobe Photoshop and A1 scanners, and old traditional techniques - OHP's, freehand painting and building layers from acetate, paper and card. I like that...

So with the white, red, yellow, blue, purple and highlights layers completed it was time to scan the transparencies. Getting A2 acetates scanned proved more difficult than anticipated and would be virtually impossible for the average home PC set up. But after a few calls were made from the boys at Screen One we found someone who was able to do the job properly.

The £50,000 worth of scanner we used was a mighty bit of kit, firing a huge beam of light from above and presenting the scanned images on a nearby monitor within seconds. Now we have the huge digital files saved onto disk, the next task is to get the screens made ready for printing...

Print Making Pt3

Yellow layer and blue layer completed
Acrylic paint on acetate transparencies.

Print Making Pt2

A quick update on the progress of the 'analogue Photoshop file' printmaking process...

The white acrylic on black background gets a second coat to boost opacity, and the second layer is completed by painting red acrylic onto an acetate transparency.

Print Making

Last week saw a quick idea turn into a full blown project in a matter of a few minutes. I’ll explain…

After the fun and games and live painting at the Upfest (see previous post), I had been approached by a few people who were interested in buying a canvas I had displayed in the bar area of the Tobacco Factory. As well from being pretty chuffed that one of my paintings had grabbed the attention of a few visitors to the event, I was also somewhat loathing the idea of fulfilling the request to paint the same canvas again – which got me thinking about producing a screen-print of the image.

I gave a quick call to my friend at Let Them Hang to discuss the idea and see if it would be possible, popped in for a spot of lunch and a cuppa, and left with a full brief of what I needed to produce to make a screen-print of one of my ‘photograffiti’ paintings. The process of which could be described as making an ‘Analogue Photoshop file’…

Although totally unintentional, this project coincides nicely with me starting up this blog, so ill document the process of making the print here - From the original first painting at the Upfest, all the way through to the final print - Which will hopefully develop pretty quickly, that is unless my nipper to be makes an early appearance!

So from the beginning – projecting the graphic onto matt black card and painting in the spaces with white acrylic paint…

Last weekend saw the first UPfest event in Bristol hosted at the Tobacco Factory in Southville and involved somewhere in the region of 50 artists from Bristol, the rest of England, Europe and the USA, and a very successful event it was too!
This event was a lot more stencil influenced than more of the jams I usually paint at, but i took this as a good opportunity to do something a bit different to the usual freehand Acer pieces I paint and decided to put up a street scene graphic similar to the Stokes Croft piece i did back at the beginning of the year.
The original image was taken on North Street a few days before the weekends event, the prep work done at midnight on Sat night, and the painting finished live at the UPfest on Sunday afternoon.

Great to hear that lots of canvases in the bar sold, raising lots of cash for a very worthwhile charity, NACOA, and a special shout should go out to Steve aka Logical1 for his time and effort in making the event happen - I didn’t see him stress once and smiled the whole way through. Good man...

First post

Its about time i started a blog of my own, i've been thinking about starting one for a while now - so here it is.
I haven't spent ages working out what it's aims and objectives are, other than to upload some images and text of the creative stuff i've been up to. I wont bother backtracking over old stuff, I'd rather just post up what is current and fresh and keeping me busy.
Love getting feedback, good or bad, so hope to hear from you soon...
Peace!