Live Art In Sheffield

Live art in Sheffield has become a vibrant regular fixture in the city with loads of artists coming out of their work spaces and doodling in front of people in bars, gigs and clubs. I'm proud to be seeing something like this take off in Sheffield, especially as I feel that it has certainly come leaps and bounds from when I first started it at the Hantu Collective Sweet Dreams Fashion show in February 2009, after that, SOYO Live decided to use the Live drawing aspect on a

weekly basis as background visual noise for their night. Unquiet Desperations also took on the live art aspect for their folksy evening of art and music, allowing artists, illustrators and etc another outlet for their creativity. Then came the introduction of the Tramlines Festival, a festival for music held in the centre of Sheffield, this also allowed live art to be seen in venues such as The Bowery, The Washington Pub and SOYO yet again, with crowds milling around in between

the live bands and acts, live art was happening around them, and they would gather and watch and ask questions. Sometimes I used to ask questions, what was point in doodling in front of people, what would I get out of it, and was it worth doing, only over time have I realised that all the times I've done live drawing I have met many people and possibly encouraged others to get involved.

Live art has become a great means for artists to promote their work, although it's never a gurantee that an art director or someone of importance will happen to pass by, there's still a beneficial advantage of being an artist who is always in the public eye for their work. Styles become more noticable and concrete which lead the audiences and passers by to sub consciencely keep tabs on certain artists who are seen to be drawing often. I'd never go so f

ar to stake a claim that I'd been a catalyst for live art in Sheffield, but the timing with the atmosphere around me and the people who I worked with on Hantu, SOYO Live and other such things, live art has grown in Sheffield with our involvement and association, something that I'm pretty proud of, especially as I see the impact it has had on budding new artists.

As I noticed more artists were taking part in live art, I came up with an idea, that those artists could be gathered together to work under one name or as a team. There fore it would become a collective of artists that could throw work eachother's way. I came up with the Stars In Stripes, a group who do live art and commissioned work and the only rule was that each member had to wear stripes as they were drawing. This group are compiled of who I think are the most enthusiastic and creative illustrators I've met in Sheffield and their appetite to put ink to board

and wall has only boosted my own enthusiasm.

I hope the Stars In Stripes is something that can grow, with more members and more commisions under it's belt. We've already amassed quite a lot of work in and around Sheffield, from the Harley Pub and Northern General Hospital but a little more couldn't hurt. Watch this space.

STARS IN STRIPES BLOG

Road Safey Project

For the past 2 weeks I've been working on a t-shirt design for Sheffield Council's Road Safety Campaign in collaboration with the Hantu Collective. The brief was simple as they wanted the designs to not have a hard line message but to look interesting and have more of an underlying message and poke a bit of fun at the theme. We decided that we would use reflective vinyls on the t-shirts so they would have functional use as well as a statement behind them.

This is what I've got so far...

Live Art at the Sheffield Cathedral

This is a late post as I'm seemingly pretty bad at keeping up to date on my blogging. Here are a few pictures from the Hantu Fashion show we hosted at the Sheffield Cathedral, an event which was the first of it's kind at the venue. I probably haven't been to quick on blogging about this as I'm still exhausted from organising the show, and trust me it was a lot of hard work! Thankfully we had an army of volunteers to help out with the music, bands, liasing with the artists and clothing labels, without them, it'd been nothing.

We also had a live art feature in the show where I had a band of illustrators draw against graffiti artists in a friendly contest where the crowd would vote at the end which piece they preferred. Unfortunately the illustrators didn't win but hey it was the taking part that counted... ha ha.

Don't Panic Panda

This took me around a week to finish off, with a lot of starting and stopping. My housemate, Mat runs the Sheffield division of Don't Panic, a quirky promotions group originally from London (you may have seen their envelopes with flyers and limited edition posters in them).

Mat's been pestering me over the year to draw a panda with a machine gun for him and so I folded. Here it is and I quite like it, even though this particular panda looks a bit vicious. I think he's going to have this as a t-shirt and he's the only one who will have the print. How selfish!

My Characters as... costumes!

So how do you think Walt Disney felt like when he first saw a 7ft Mickey Mouse costumed staff member walk around his first Disney Land park? Probably not as overwhelmed as I was when I saw my Speeka Peeps characters and cat doodle being made into costumes themselves.

They were created and designed by me and Ceri Rimmer who is also a kick ass seamstress who works on her own line of clothing, Cherry Head. We created the costumes for the Hantu Presents fashion show at Sheffield Cathedral, the characters would add a bit more fun to the catwalk and would be handing out flyers beforehand.

It was pretty neat seeing my own creations come to life... even if they were just friends wearing the costumes and acting daft!

The Stars In Stripes

I've become a very lazy blogger, especially with the amount of work that has come my way recently and the kerfuffle of not having internet access at the new house I was living in AND then having to move out of one property into another... but I shall vow to get straight back on to the blog stuff.

In case you didn't know I wanted to create a group for the live artists to work under so we can share contacts and opportunities and just have more banter between us. The idea then became the Stars In Stripes, a group that wear Stripes whilst live drawing, simple concept really, anyone can join as long as they wear their stripes!

I've put together a blog for this to journal our doodling exploits.

THE STARS IN STRIPES BLOG

Unfinished Monster Project...

I've posted this up early as it looked a finished piece, even though it's meant to be part of a bigger piece. I'm entering a competition called "Imaginary Beings" held by the Milkwood Gallery in Cardiff where the brief is to illustrate a beast of mythical context, with free reign over style. It's been a while since I've done anything truly fun and self initiated so I wanted to give this one a go.

The monster I'll be illustrating is the Chimera, the mythological beast from Greek folklore with a head of a lion, body of a goat and tail of a snake. Random as it is, a platypus probably would have been a better idea, but once I've started, I just have to finish...