Project jelly fish

One of my latest projects.


What to do with a multitude of plastic bottles I seem to be gathering ? Dump them in the recyling bin? why not create something artistic out of rubbish?
So here's project Jelly Fish.

The idea came to me some years ago when I was creating some magic mushrooms for the "Enchanted forest" Party. We used the plastic bottles as stakes and heated them up to deform the otherwise easily recognizable bottle. Liked the effect. At that time I was also toying with the idea of large art pieces made from ,well rubbish.

A few weeks ago I was playing with a PET bottle I had around and after a bit of cutting and heating I cam e up with what looked like a jelly fish.
Well i happen to like jelly fish , that scourge of summer. You only start appropriate them if you take the plunge and carefully watch them in their own environment.But I digress
Anyway the shape came easy enough and with a few tweaks to the technique I soon had quite a few of these critters

What's next.
I have a few ideas. firstly I want to include some light. as you can see from the pics the light really creates a beautiful effect passing through the translucent plastic. The idea is to create as 'chandelier' with LED lights going in the jellies .
Any more ideas?

New website

After a long absense from the Blog and my website , I decided to update my site. Welcome to the new , revamped website. Just follow the link here .

Bit of a mood ..

I was in a bit of a mood when I did this. Dark and gloomy.
I had this idea of portraying some of the realities of our world. The piece is divided into 3 parts.
The bottom part shows an african face , eyes closed . Above it a scene of a polluted world barbed wire, factories belching smoke which form the 3rd pard .: children dying in a poor world.
In a way the factories , which produce so much of the wealth and products we so crave work on the backs of our poorer cousins . Its a reality we have to face and account for.

Painting with coffee

While I was painting i decided to take photos of the steps I've taken to create the painting . It gives me a chance to document the process.


First i prepare the board by sanding it lightly. This makes my life easier . I use a mixture of coffee and tea to stain the canvas. While wet I also sprinkle crushed coffee granules. This gives it a more aged and textured feel

Next I lightly pencil in the drawing . It's more of a guideline as most of the lines would be covered with layers of colors .You have to be careful not to make any line too dark. Otherwise it will be a bitch to remove later.


Using mostly Browns I begin to darken the shadows, slowly bringing the face out of the background
Building later upon layer the face starts taking shape.

Blacks really add a nice contrast to the browns.Black ink does the job pretty well. The highlights are mainly white chalk pastels .

More Work.

I had some time to upload some of my latest work and some old stuff( which i have just taken some good photos of.)

Buy Nothing

And here we are again.. It Christmas or at least will be soon. Soon Christmas decorations will come up , bathing our streets will the light of a million colored bulbs. Shop windows will be covered in snow spray, plastered with messages that while wishing you a great holiday also tell you to buy. And Buy . And Buy.
It's seems part of the modern day Christmas tradition. From mid November we start seeing subtle messages in the media of what we should buy. Toy commercials become more common( as if children only exist round Christmas). Than there is the rush to buy the dreaded Christmas presents , which lest face it sometimes end up in a drawer or on a shell , never to be used or seen again. You see people's faces as they think " I've got now idea what to get X this year" followed by the realization that a few days before Christmas and you haven't bought all the stuff.
There is the mad rush and rush in the shopping centers. Crowds pushing and bumping into each other in the streets. Sometimes a push leads to an exchange of angry looks and occasionally followed by a few words in anger. Traffic builds up as cars spend hours looking for parking , spending to much time staring in the tail lights of the care in front thinking what the hell am i doing here. Tempers flair.
Than there is the inevitable realization that you have spent a shit load of money..
Is this the modern Christmas spirit?
In the winter of 1914 Germans and allied troops stopped fighting for one day , Christmas eve. They sang Christmas carols and greeted one another much to the dismay of their superiors. Remember this is Belgium in the first world war , one of the bloodiest conflict in modern history.
That is the Christmas spirit. Good will to you fellow human being , charity and bringing a bit of happiness i someone's life. But this seems to have taken a back seat in today's modern world.
Now its buy, spend and give useless gifts to each other and regretting every cent you spend.

The Other Way.
So what can we do about it? Simple. Buy Nothing. Lets face it we could be much better off for it. In countless ways.
Firstly the most obvious of all. The money you save. In these times of economic hard times we all need to save cash. At the end of the day we all have more important things to use the money on.
Than there is all the useless crap we will avoid throwing away sooner or later ( and in most cases quite sooner). The plastic packing, paper wrappers fuel spent going to and fro shopping center endlessly looking for parking....well the list is endless.

And there is less stress.

But there is something you can give to the people to care for. You can give time. Something money can't buy. Spend more time together , have a coffee and a long chat and a good laugh.Sometimes the greatest gift you can give someone is yourself.
Give them a smile.Be more kind to the people around you. At home , at work and even in the streets while driving. Maybe ,just maybe we can achieve the spirit of 1914:)
If you really want to give something why not make an effort and make something yourself.
And even thou its early but i really from my heart wish you all a happy Christmas and all the best .
Ian

Playing with my nuts.

(tree of life)

Ok . It's been a while. But ,hey, there was summer and the sun and than other stuff. Couldnt really site down and right stuff and update the blog .
But... I wasn't idle and here is what I've been up too.

Working with Coconut shells.
These are some jewelry made from coconut shell in combination with other materials. The colored sections are crushed stones (turquoise, Jasper...depending on the colour I need.) I'm also trying to use metals( see the tree of Life). The idea came from seeing the work of a good friend of mine, Peppi. ( also check the BahrijaOasis project. Later on this)

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Latest Painting

These are the latest paintings I have made.

This is my interpretation of "mother and Child". I know its not the happiest of images but it's a reality we want to forget but have to face.

A portrait of a very special person to me:)

More building

My brother building the Chandler out of twigs for "Forest".Ok, It looks like a giant overturned nest. However it works great with the lights and all.

Masks!

Here are some masks I 've made for "Forest". As a base I used papier mache simple masks and than worked on them. I'm really happy with the one's with the branches. It gave me an idea it develop them into a sculpture!

Still alive!

I haven’t been updating the blog lately. Well, it has been a busy time, lots of things gooing on.Lets start with project Forest.

It went a bit pear shaped. Not our fault thou. Bloody rain. We had weeks and weeks of sun and great weather all round than the weekend the party was on all hell break loose: gale force winds and rain. Lots of it. And by the gods we tried . We decided that the show will go on,after all we still had light and sound ...until the power was cut off! We had to cancel it all.

On a positive note we are moving the event to a later day. The Forest will come alive on the 14th June at Mellieha.

So with all the stuff going on I didn’t have time to paint.But I have a few ideas to work on so keep visiting .

Project "Forest"

Work is moving is moving on swiftly.Been busy build mushrooms ,gateways and masks. My costume is coming along nicely. I'll post some pictures( after the event. I don't want to give it away too soon:))

Core Green Exhibitions

Well... exhibition went very well. Got some great feedback and I really looking forward to have my own solo exhibition. Didn't sell anything, but than again no one did.
So..after the event we have created a group called "CoreGreen"which will create organize events combining Art and green principles.The next event will be during "Earth Garden" in Ta Qali.

Storm is over!

Now that the political storm is over ( we just had our general elections for all reading this from abroad ) and after several other events I have some time to up date my Blog.
Well, It's been a very busy 3 weeks , first with the exhibition ( I'll be posting more on that later) , "Story of Stuff" ( the latest green drinks event) and the damn Election. Didn't do much painting (well did some work actually) . But now it should be all hands on deck for "Project Forest".More on this later!

Project Rose and lily

A while ago I was commissioned to paint a mural in a bar in St Julian's by my friend and interior designer Chantal. The theme was a bit awkward, not really my style.You see ,the Bar is called "Rose and Lily" so the mural had to some how tie in. Floral stuff is not really my forte but...
Well here is the work( I took photos of each step):

Started with a ploting the proportions on the bare wall. The area was approximatly 2m X 3m.The horizontal and vertical line ( basically 2 pieces of string) gave me a rough guide. I than proceeded in sketching the design.

Next I started filling in the first colour , the red of the rose. I use mainly acrylic. Its cheap, easy to handle and dries fast.

I than used black to give the red shap and shadows. I avoided using lighter reds on each petal and just used some cadmium yellow on small parts to give a bit of highlight. I believe i gave the rose a more velvety feel( on the side you can see the reference pix i used)Next came the lily.

Lilies are normally thought of as white, i know . But I couldn't really see a white iliy on a white wall!! So I went for a purple colour, high lighted with white.

Finished the lily ( still need to do the stamens but that will come later) I started the background.
I basically used watered done shades of Green , just to give the surface a colour wash , adding more colour using the airbrush.

More green.:)

And finished. After finishing the lily from the Stamens I added the curvy designs on the sides, just to balance out the composition.