Expose Yourself

An Arts and Events Management final major project saw the Bournemouth Secret Wars team invited to showcase our talents for an hour or so at Sixty Million Postcards in Bournemouth.

The evening was a resounding success and gave us the needed time to practice together in front of an art-hungry crowd of AUCB students.

...there was music

...the stage is set

...for a clearly very bothered audience

>> Some pics of what we got up to on the night (me in checked shirt)...

>> I'm kinda second on in from the right, below the word exposed...mixing it up with fellow artist Denni Harryman, seeing my crazy coffin/skull/plane/cloud things mixing it large with Denni's pyramids/characters and type.

Hats off to people like Olivia Hunt for making this happen...and thank you kindly for the invitation and publicity for Secret Wars this created as in a couple of days we (the Secret Wars Team) had to go and perform live in Birmingham...

Shaun of the Dead >> Fine Art Fundraiser

June saw me return to The Winchester to perform some more live visual entertainment - this time in the name of charity...'The Fine Art Fundraiser' - or as my mate Luke called it the 'Fungal Foot Powder' - don't ask! I was asked to create some zombie art...and that was pretty much that in terms of guidance so I just went crazy and produced some material which was to be auctioned off at the end of the evening...

A touch of fun saw the 'Shaun of the Dead' themed evening aptly take place in the Winchester pub - the place they decide best in the film to have the last stand...

>> A clip from youtube

>> while we are on the matter of summing up movies in 5 seconds be sure to check out these beauties...f**king hilarious procrastination time...

Now, back to reality... and here are some truly awful pictures taken on my phone of the art I produced for the event.

Perhaps the only relevant drawing of the night...

Moon Street >> Relaunch @ The Winchester >> What I got up to

>> Pictures of my work from the evening...

The evening allowed me to hark back to the digital style I was so loving at the end of 2009 before I got caught up in all this live-art malarky! But in all seriousness it was great fun to promote this work live in front of an audience as it is such fun to create - and doing it live with people from the audience allowed me to really engage and entertain.

>> Before/after...

The idea was to take pictures of people as they walked in and transform (or mutate!) their faces before their very own eyes digitally on my laptop - with my work being projected live onto a large drop down screen on the stage and various TVs around the Winchester Pub. It worked a treat as in between the music it allowed people to have a real laugh with their mates face getting destroyed over a casual pint.

Here is a stop motion video of the other 'headlining artist' from the night Seb Pape doing his thing...a rather beautiful rendition of his illustration blasted up large on a wall in full technicolour paint brushing. Cheekily you can just about see a couple of screens showing my work...more pictures will hopefully come of this event - but without my camera it was hard to properly document the evening. Big shame...will have to rely on Facebook.

It gave me a real appetite to do it again some time in the near future...but the future of Moon Street must lay in helping to promote other local talent too. If you have a real skill or passion for your art, or know anyone don't hold back in getting in touch with us as technicolourmoon@gmail.com or email me direct at mrbakerillustration@gmail.com.

ALSO BE SURE to check out the Moon Street website - it documents every event in full with full artist links and contacts...check it!

Moon Street >> Relaunch @ The Winchester >> promo re-design

The May edition of the Moon Street legacy was relaunched with a new venue, new style and new artists. We chose to re-locate the evening to the other end of town, into a more culturally aware district to a pub called The Winchester. This beautiful environment (its a converted Victorian Bank) is truly inspirational in itself (see above), with the venue holding amazing events such as Freeway Poets and now Moon Street its the perfect place to come enjoy some live art. Check this blog post from the Moon Street website for the write up of the night - but be sure to check out the rest of the blog - its the reason I have been neglecting my own exploits for so long, having set up the style, layout and images. Its been a pain in the arse but its definitely worth the effort! Long live Moon Street!

The above images showcase both the poster and the flyer that I created for the relaunch event. What we (Technicolour Moon) are trying to do is allow the promotional material to show off the artist as well as the event, this provides a series for the punter - with a reverse side of the flyer being a collectable mini-poster of the featured artist. This allows each event to take on a unique style and theme - but within the confines of a template - in this case the Moon Street typography.

This relaunch event allowed me the rare opportunity for an artist - of freedom to do what I wished - with the flyer and poster designs, but the format proved a real success.

The reason I got into trouble with the fuzz...

Its all over and done with now, but here are some pictures of my exploits on the wild streets of Bournemouth...

Sweet Freaks >> Variety Show

This variety show technically sandwiched itself between the WAYF event, but deserved its own solitary post seeing the random nature of the event. Essentially a burlesque variety show (click here for the line-up) the event saw art in various forms take place over a very, very entertaining and quite surreal evening.

>> Some pics of the night...

Seeing our stock rise as visual performers in Bournemouth through both Moon Street and Secret Wars I was invited to draw on a car outside the venue in the run up to the show - this eneded up being one of the most enjoyable and collaborative drawing events so far. I teamed up with artists Luke Trimmings and Nick Marsh to draw whatever we wanted on a poor delapitated Astra. Little did it know its fate...

>> Some pics of what we did...and some rather lovely ladies appreciating the hard work!

>> Finally to give you a sense of the surrealism experienced here...

WAYF Block Party >> The Main Event

The second and third installment of the work for WAYF came in the form of me drawing on various forms of furniture that would help create an artistic corner for the Engine Rooms - part of the club where the event was taking place. The idea was that people could come and interact with this furniture, sit down and then enjoy the third part of the days work - 4 artists drawing live onto the wall sat opposite the 'lounge'.

Apologies for the quality of the documenting photography - I've had to source it off Facebook and my phone. So, here goes...

> The 'lounge' furniture... (more to come there was a sofa and a lampshade too, I promise!) This took shape as an illustrative documentary of the line-up including portrait images of the headline DJs.

> The 'Live-art wall'... Saw the usual coffin-styled skulls that seem to be cycling through my illustration at the moment splash themselves around my drawing space (right hand side).

...yours truly...

WAYF Block Party >> Buffalo Bar - An introduction to spray

In the first installment of 3 separate events in one day for the WAYF Block Party (pictured above) myself and Krishna (Tech Moon) started at Buffalo Bar for the wrist exchange for the evening event. We were literally handed a strip of wall and told to go crazy and that we did - creating mini-buffalo sperm that adorned the wall in a style similiar to the Flintstones. Overall the project was tongue-in-cheek seeing as we only had a couple of hours from start to finish. Below is a pic of the semi-finished piece...

Here are some closer pictures of my creations...(apologies for the quality - blame the phone!)

Moon Street April 19 @ Orange Rooms >> Anglepoise sideshow

Much of my last 2 months online has seen me overhauling both Technicolour Moon and our arts-event Moon street - both restyling the blogs and helping to curate the events and April 19th saw the final chapter of Moon Street at The Orange Rooms.

This event saw another brave visual experiment by the Tech Moon boys as we introduced digital art to the realms of live visual performance. Click here for the write up of the event and proceeding images of the night on the Moon Street website...as for me the night presented me the chance to draw on a giant Anglepoise lampshade - supplied direct from the company themselves.

As part of an exciting mini-project for Tech Moon as a collective the iconic lamp manufacturer supplied us with a couple of lampshades to draw on live - and this was one such event. Click here for a link to see quite how massive and immense these things are - I WANT ONE - Suspended from the ceiling me and Max Galbraith drew for a couple of hours a scene of volcanic mayhem and disruption - cheeky but relevant dig drawn at the time of the volcanic ash debacle in Iceland!

Here are some pics >>

After a recent run in with the law my camera was confiscated for much of march/april/may so I had to rely on others or the restricted ability of the camera on my phone...but here are some close ups taken back at home >>

So...

So...I’ve been off the web radar for a couple of months. The early part of 2010 has seen many changes with me moving away from home and back down to Bournemouth; and despite being extremely busy with several interesting projects and personal objectives, I have somewhat neglected this blog as a result. So...excuses over and now onto one gigantic update that will probably take me all night - and I have chosen the night of the World Cup final as the ideal moment in time to achieve this overhaul, not a good start!

So...I haven't been sitting around do diddly for the last two months, oh no, I've been living every post-graduates dream of working long hard hours pushing out pizzas for the local hut. Hey, it pays the bills - well actually just...but thats for another time. What I have learnt form the last few months of lonesome living is that you can't do everything all at once (even if it feels like it is all happening like that). A girl once told me that life is what happens while you are busy making other plans - true, but there is no panic - merely a drive to succeed in what you are passionate about and making sure what passes doesn't kill those plans you aim for.

So...preach over and now onto that update that I am still putting off well into the 'update'!


pens...a skill re-discovered

So...now to put all that into context. Since moving back to Bournemouth my illustration has taken a path that is completely with odds with what I thought I would be doing. My work in 2010 has moved away from the digital style that I had been forging through 08/09 and has been concentrated on a more organic and illustrative approach. This is due mainly to my participation in both Moon Street and the Secret Wars Euro League and the subsequent amazing artists that I have been talking to and therefore a move back to using pens and pencils to connect paper-with pen-with what strange things that transcend my mind!