kangeiko

A series of artworks have appeared down my street over the last few days, always overnight. They are:

1. several instances of rats holding globes with blood dripping from them, one large-ish, on an electrical box cover, one medium, in conjunction with artwork 2, below, on a whitewashed wall, and one small, above a street sign.
2. a medium-sized image of the fat bloke (Hardy?) from Laurel & Hardy, grinning and holding a machine gun. Someone has added - presumably afterwards? graffitting the graffitti? - "that's another fine mess you've got me in!", on a stretch of whitewashed wall. (Whitewashed for the purpose, I should think; the rest of the building is brick and unpainted.)

There were a bunch of people outside today, as well as photographers from various papers. There is speculation that these are Banksys. Now -
1. The images are vaguely repetitive, with the rat appearing several times in various guises.
2. The writing appears to have been added afterwards, but otherwise the jolly fat man with the machine gun seems to fit Bansky's known subject matter.
3. These are on a residential street, not on a big thoroughfare, and so aren't his usual haunts. On the other side, these are busy residential streets, off a major road.

Thoughts? I did take some pictures, if people would be interested.

I got a nice pile of cash as part of my birthday present, with strict instructions from my mum to spend it on nice things - and not DVDs. Clearly, DVDs are not nice things. Anyway, I used to love drawing as a kid, but haven't picked up a pencil in about 4/5 years. This is clearly wrong, because drawing calmed me down and was great stress relief. So, I thought - why not? There's an art supply store nearby, I have some days off...

End result: some fab new sketching pencils, some lovely thick paper, and a stack of watercolours. Now, I have never used watercolours before, but I remember pastels being majorly messy, so I decided to try something erm, a little more manageable. I opted for the 'pencil' watercolours - so I could use the pencils as normal colouring pencils if I wanted. Here are the results of 5 years of no drawing, some new art materials and a considerable amount of enthusiasm. Bear in mind that I use photo references for everything, so.

Oh - and our scanner is dead. So, instead, you get phone photos of the sketching. Gosh, I'm really selling it, aren't I?

1. The hand
( Read more... )

My left hand. Clearly fascinating for all concerned. OK, when I said I use photo references for everything, I lied. I drew this while, you know, looking. And it sorta shows...

*

2. Female nude (she's over 18, LJ).

( Read more... )

This one does have a photo ref. Well, sort of. The woman wasn't holding on to anything, the light was different, her breasts were different, you could see more of her face, etc. But I was in a hurry.

*

3. 'Noggo' Girl
( Read more... )

OK, this one is a little wierd. For one thing, the angle at which the photo was taken makes her head look enormous. It's not, I promise. Also, this isn't really from a photo ref, but from a 40s poster for a drink called 'Noggo' - that's what she's drinking - and I was more focused on her torso and legs than on her face. Again, that kinda shows. To be fair, the poster was done in acrylics, with no actual outlines, but, rather, colours blending into each other. It was fine on her body - the camisole and background were strong colours against which to figure out where things went - but it was difficult to get definition on the features. Oh, well. I quite like her, even though she looks reidiculously thin and horsey.

Plus, this was the time some random doctor from the nearby hospital was having a coffee next to me, and started chatting me up. So I got distracted. :) But! Doctor!

*

4. Watercolour girl

( Read more... )

If you're thinking that the pose looks familiar, you'd be right. The reference for this was the cover of A.S. Byatt's Angels and Insects, which I am currently reading. The shading on the left hand side wouldn't come out properly when photographed, which annoys me slightly, but otherwise I suppose that it's ok for a first attempt. I kinda like using watercolours, I may take them on holiday with me and spnd some time drawing. A woman can't live by sun, sea and sand alone, after all...

OK, that's them. All the artists out there - constructive criticism, please? It's been years since I did this, I need some quick exercises to get back into the swing of it... (I know, I know, my perspectives need work...)

(Oh, and this isn't xposted, as IJ and GJ require paid memberships for photos, so...)

Araki: Self - Life - Death, still showing at the Barbican.

Even those who are unfamiliar with Araki's work have probably seen some of his more explicit images: his wife, or one of his other models, naked and tied up with silk ropes. It's certainly what I was expecting when I went to the exhibition, and was a little wary at 4,000+ explicit images before lunchtime.

Happily, my preconceptions couldn't have been further from the truth. Yes, Araki's work focuses on the erotic and on death - erotos - but what struck me about many of the most explicit pieces was the inclusion of the model's faces. I had been expecting 1) the concealment of the face or at the very least 2) a blank expression. Instead, the models looked right into the camera. It was actually somewhat unnerving to be watched whilst examining them.

While the erotic permeated the entire exhibition, not all of the photographs were explicit - or, indeed, of people. In fact, one of my favourite sections was 'Flowers', which featured close-ups of the inside of flowers, budding or in bloom. Some of the photos had overlays of colour; some had been painted before being photographed. All of the 'Flowers' photos were, without exception, vibrant and intensely erotic.

My other favourite section was entitled 'From a Blue Period', and spanned many types of shots, from cityscapes to kinbaku (rope bondage) to 'distressed' over-exposed shots to simple portraits. The choice of colour and the overlays of filters etc, especially in the 'Blue period' kinbaku shots, was absolutely beautiful. (So much so that I was highly tempted to purchase a coffee-table book of the selection, despite the hefty price-tag. Alas, frugality prevailed, and I consoled myself with some postcards instead.)

Not all of the exhibition was wonderful, of course. The 4,000+ photographs would have been even more overwhelming if fully half of them were not polaroids, and covered one room from floor to ceiling. As wingsmith and I slowly walked around this room, I started to get rather dizzy. Many of the polaroids were very similar, and very explicit. They struck me as works in progress, or at least research - certainly not completed works. There are only so many photographs of a poached egg that a person can examine before becoming slightly confused as to why they were doing this.

wingsmith and I were also slightly discomforted at the photographs of dolls with kinbaku ropes stringing them up. The channish implications of this - even if they were just in my head and not intended by the artist - were rather disturbing for me.

Conclusions: worth a look. A documentary ("Arakimentary") is screened every two hours (and lasts an hour and a half), which looks at the artist at work; pretty much all of Araki's major works are included, and, as I said, the 'Flowers' and 'Blue Period' sections make it worth the price of a ticket.

It's like 'spam the world with minor accomplishments' day, isn't it?

I did this wee sketch (well, wee as in, I've reduced it from huge to wee) many, many moons ago. I've only just gotten around to tidying it up pre- and post-scanning. (Also, athena25 has a scanner. Which means that we have a scanner. Now how did I miss this?)

Anyway, concrit would be welcome, especially as I do still scribble in sketchpads from time to time. This was done in pencils from pictures, photos and extrapolations, rather than from life. I tidied it on photoshop post-scanning, as it just... wouldn't.

( male nude )