Ink Dots Black Spots

Once again I have neglected my blog, and as with my last post I have dusted off my keyboard to tell you about a group art show I have a piece in. This time it’s a Melbourne based show conceived by lovely local artist Simple Sime, involving 50 artists from 15 different tattoo studios around Australia and New Zealand. All artists were instructed to create a piece of art in plain black ink on white, which would then be screen-printed by Dangerfork for the exhibition.  A limited edition of 20 signed and numbered prints per piece will be for sale, and a portion of the proceeds will benefit the Cancer Council of Victoria. An impressive list of the artists involved  and other relevant details can be found on the website here.

I really enjoyed the challenge of creating a piece without the smooth gradients I usually employ to give depth and tone. I’ve always wanted to try plain ink work for the purpose of screen-printing, but have shied away from it for that very reason – I still think I’m better at drawing and painting in my usual style, but I think having tried this method I’ll experiment with it some more. I will happily admit to being strongly influenced by gorgeous poster artist David D’Andrea with this piece, one of my favourite illustrators whose prints I have hanging both at home and above my bench at the tattoo studio. As he works almost exclusively with black ink I thought of his posters often for much needed guidance. 

(click to enlarge)

The concept was something I’d been planning for a while, and that I felt could be re-imagined fairly well for a detailed, line-heavy drawing. Passionflowers are by far my favourite flower and a treasured herb in my personal pharmacopeia. I fell in love with them after their gentle sedative effects saved me from crippling anxiety as a teenager, and have used them ever since (though these days it’s mostly for insomnia). They are truly beautiful and amazing flowers, rather like strange organic space ships…and as if that weren’t enough, they also give us sweet, delicious passionfruit! For some reason I can’t discern, I’m infatuated with portraying fruits that have been torn open by birds, exposing their flesh and seeds. So…without wanting to delve too deep into what that’s all about, that’s how my disorganised ideas about those things managed to become a halfway organised drawing.

Some close-ups of the detail in the flowers and nest:

 

Hopefully some of you will like the print  (or someone else’s) enough to buy one and help out a worthy cause. The exhibition opens on Thursday August 16th at The Vic Bar in Abbotsford, and all prints are reasonably priced at $60. Would be great to see some of you there.

Sleepy Sun

I’ve acquired quite a lot of new music recently, but right now as my poor workmates know all too well, I just cannot stop listening to Sleepy Sun. I’ve been addicted to both their albums ever since I heard them a few weeks ago, but it’s this amazing first track on their latest album Fever that kills me every time. Here’s some cool footage of them playing it live in Barcelona.

Unfortunately Rachel, the female vocalist featured on those albums and in the footage above, has since left the band which is such a shame because I find the male/female harmonies in Sleepy Sun thoroughly mesmerizing. Hopefully her absence won’t spoil my enjoyment of any future offerings they have in store, but I’m definitely sad to hear she’s gone.

You can buy their albums and some pretty great merch from their website here. Fever especially is worth getting for the gorgeous cover which was done by one of my favourite artists, David V. D’Andrea who I talked about on here a little while back. 

Go buy some of their stuff, and with any luck they’ll be touring our neck of the woods some day soon.

David V. D'Andrea

I have a new favourite poster artist and his name is David V. D'Andrea. I found him whilst perusing Om's myspace page and discovered that as well as being an incredibly gifted illustrator, he has made art for a number of my favourite bands including Grails and Earth. His beautiful hand-drawn gig posters possess a human quality somewhat lacking in a lot of graphic art today, and his use of skulls, birds, flowers and pagan figures impart a certain grandiosity that I feel is appropriate for the music his posters represent. I bought one of his 'Scratch and Dent' tubes last week, which is a tube shipped for a flat rate with an assortment of slightly damaged posters in it, and not only was he a perfect gentleman to deal with, he also sent me an Om poster on request and threw in a few extra goodies that I wasn't expecting. The posters are also only very slightly damaged, and in some cases I haven't even figured out what's wrong with them. David, go to the head of the class and collect a gold star.