Here is the Full wall with Enue, The spot i had in mind was being painted already so Enue got to rock behind a bush, and my laziness prevented me from getting good head on shots. Trying to quit smoking whilst not dropping almost every other ball im juggling at least once is tough. Add two heavy smokers trying to quit and paint at the same time its a miracle we didn,t cop out on some co-dependent multi enabler shit and end up behind 7-11 splitting a back Marlboro reds and drinking 40s! I have it on good authority nicotine is drug, so we 12 stepping our way out. See you on the other side! related post :http://heavylox.com/reasonAndRasclot/2011/08/triple-a-rated/

Molotow Colors

Sketch:
sahara Beige
cadmium yellow
tele magenta

Piece:
Poison green
Evil Olive
Traffic red
Pastel Orange
Light orange Brown
almond
white
Toast Gloss Black (SOOOO GOOD)
light Kiwi (ran out of poison)

Background:
Dark Shadow Grey
Esher Dirty Red (among the favs)
Butterfly
Light Piglet Pink
grapefruit

The wall was supposed to be black, which much of it was, however my section was a city buff grey, which through off the game plan of having a black background, sometimes half the fun is working with what you got, which can also then turn into the main source of heartache, regrets and shattered dreams; Ive seen it happen. At any rate, after the heat almost KOed me i drew down on some of the plans to fill the vacuous grey background area. As Usual there was a good selection of people present to while away the day, shoot the shit with. Hotta Fya, humble I.

Ive been on this kick to find some new letter shapes, and while perusing flickr i was reminded of Raekwons first album cover “only built for cuban links”. Keep in mind my mind a mash of loose ends and wildly obvious missed connections. At the time i had never really paid any attention to type, in fact I didn’t really pay much attention to any type after that for a long time. but at the time i was fairly floored by the combination of upper and lowercase letter fragments. the formation of legible letters from letter pieces was awesome to me. And it went no further, I’m sure i found some shinny bit of paper and forgot all about the awesomeness of type and thus never got the chance to let my mind wonder past the initial admiration into the pasture of how can i use and or otherwise apply this to things i do. I missed the distillation of what was happening, by committing it to a ‘oh i like this’, and promptly moving on. A short 15 or so years later i found myself reminiscing about it, remembering the essence over the execution, and digging it up confirmed that. But the essences was there in my mind, i just never it gave a change to gain any context. When given the right clues the mind and fight through abstraction and wrestle it into recognition.

• Say as much as you can in as few words as possible.
• Over indulge by way of restrictive and economic consumption.
• generalize enough to form specifics.
• circle, square, triangle.

digital previs; rath

earlier sketch, trying to work out omissions.

Sometimes the harder you consciously try the less you get accomplished. I am all for failure as a teaching tool; however if the quality of the failure is no more then common contrivances then there is little to learn save, stop trying so hard and let it flow more naturally; less consciously that is.

I want new shapes. In regards to style writing, its all about the shapes, abstracting the commonly accepted and universally recognized letter form into a new, or re-refined shape echoing the established while seeking to be its own thing. Just as a child is a recognized human they grow up with the hopes of becoming their own individual, complimenting the hole while expanding on its definition.

As part of trying to find new shapes i found myself looking at the photos of a good friend Saul Metnick of Blandscape.org. I haven’t spoken to him about his work for a while, other then to know hes in the mix and trying ti keep himself moving. From the outset i will say, i dont get photography, i can spot a ragingly good photo, but i miss a lot of the nuance that may make one photo stand out from others. My sense of framing can be hap-hazard at best and accidentally genius once in a blue moon. Saul has always brought a sense of whit and irony to his photos; which i always appreciated but was never convinced was the sole basis for him taking good photos. In looking at many the other day i started to look beyond the subject and just see the shapes, created by the interplay of forms and shadows (which have always been there but took me time to come too, im an idiot with a decent vocabulary). SO in an attempt to distill the shapes and things i found interesting I took some screen shots and did some illustrator mock ups. Surely nothing groundbreaking but a good place to start.

Years ago i went to a sleep away summer camp, where oddly i met two people whom were huge artistic influences on me. One was a Boston writer, the other was a free time portrait artist. Thinking about it know it was a super coincidence on both parts, and kinda leads me to believe life as a way of providing things you need if your paying attention. At any rate this portrait artist, whos name is slipping my mind(read ive plum forgotten, it was over 20 years ago), both intellectually explained and showed me over the summer his methodology for figure drawing. What he did was sort of squint at his subject, thus reducing what he saw to a series of tonal areas or shapes, instead of looking at and intellectually trying to reproduce a figure he was just drawing shapes with different tonal values. This then became the base for the drawing and he would push and pull the shapes tones and spacial relations. He basically generalized until he had enough information to begin to become more specific. it was a process the involved a lot of layers and building of mass through shade. It was a revolution for me at the time and inspired a few years of mimicking his style and approach. Ive wanted to get away from just line work in my drawings for a while as they are getting kinda of stiff, so why not try and work in shades and tones. INstead of cross hatching i used the good old never ending circle.

bacon x rath: Rath Ups Cod 3a

Ive been working slowly and spottily on this idea for a few years now. The idea of combining pieces, and have yet to really commit or propperly prepare a wall to do it the way i see it my head; For one reason or another the right time hasnt presented itself yet, or maybe i havent forced it yet. It started with this in Montreal about 2 years ago with this Re-Run X Rath* pictured at the bottom of post.  And Later that year, did this, “rated as Ideated” painful little jawn. IT seems like the more i did it the worse it got, a year ago was this, HeavyXRath.

So this weekend i got back on the fail horse and road out in hopes of doing a decent Bacon X Rath. And as it would happen it was a cool 92 degrees yesterday and the heat Kick the crap out of me. At one point i found myself lying on some concrete that was in the shade, my shirt was up so my back could cool off on the cooler concrete. I drank 2 gallons of water, two 16oz Tropicana Ojs, and a little bit of a Tropicana lemonade, which it turned out was lemon flavored not lemonade so that got trashed. RastaFari is a blessing but the Lox can be an oven in the hot heat and sun parade. There was a lot more background work and top letter integration i wanted to do, but I admitted defeat in the mid evening.

********* the olders…

re-Run X Rath:

Rath X rath: rated as ideated,

Heavy X rath: Sloppy Thomas,

I saw this woman the other day. She was walking so i couldnt really get a good drawing done, but in the brief time she passed me i did a quick sketch and then was inspired by her memory. She had a quintessential caricature-ish figure or one well suited to be embellished.