Legal Dragon

What's percolatin'?!? This is a dragon I painted here in Edmonton (Canada) on a free art wall downtown - anyone can come here and paint whatever they want. I think it's something the city has been fairly forward thinking on in terms of concept - the only problems are the area it's in is pretty seedy, which scares off a lot of kids who might want to do some art, and knowledge of the spot seems to be spread solely by word of mouth. I've had cops roll up all suspicious several times and start interrogating me because they themselves had no idea we were allowed to be there! A few awkward phone calls later things are usually cleared up. That said, I'm friends with a couple locals in the area and they are always mega stoked to see new art going up, and sometimes offer me a shopping cart to stand on if I'm trying to paint something really tall. My man Charlie, what it do!! Thanks for checking me out and catch you on the flip!

Sneak Peek at Tha Format

What's good!? Here's a piece I did for an upcoming project called Tha Format - it's an upcoming TV show focused on representing the 4 elements of Hiphop to a youth audience. The show is gonna be dope, shedding some light on some fly local talent. Tha Format features some segments that appear every episode and teach people about Hiphop one element at a time - for example, my man Taro is going to take out a classic record and show you first how to sample it and chop it up, then make a beat with it.

The piece I did is gonna be the general background for the show, as it's in the main studio space. While I was painting it, I was getting filmed and photographed, so there's gonna be an animated sequence featuring the production of the piece as one of the graffiti segments and possibly the intro. I tried to represent within the work the major 4 territories claimed by Hiphop culture, those being DJing, MCing, BBoying, and Graffiti. Overall, this took me around 11 hours or so, but I had to keep stopping to dance cause the beats were hype!

More Practice!

Jets, fool! Here are a couple hand studies I did a couple months ago in graphite. Practice makes perfect, and I still need practice! Hands are extremely expressive, and look great when worn at the wrist. I used my own hand as a reference, and yes, my fingers are freakishly long, knobbly, spindly things.

Here are a couple old 3-point perspective studies I did a while back, relatively quick practice pieces that ended up sloppier and much less refined than I would have liked, but were good practice for some of the things I'm working on now. The top one is an early watercolour concept sketch for Flavour City (obviously the capital of Flavour Country), and the bottom one was an early concept sketch for a Y.E.S.S. (Youth Emergency Shelter Society) student ad campaign. Not happy with the line quality or perspective in either one, but every wack mistake represents something good to learn, so I seek 'em out. More practice!

Thanks Tracey!

Holla! Quick shoutout to Tracey, who went to the trouble of finding me on Facebook and returning a portfolio I left on the bus a while back. Thanks again Tracey, 'nuff respect!!