The Sandy Studio

Since the keen interest and recent demand of my seascape and landscape paintings, I have set up The Sandy Studio an online gallery to sell some of my recent paintings and sketches.

I'll be painting live all weekend at Porthtowan Food Festival.

Paintings and sketches will be uploaded regularly and throughout the weekend. If you would like to be informed when new work is updated and news of upcoming exhibitions just send through your email address, or "drop in" regularly to thesandystudio.com




Have a great weekend! :)

Cosmic

Recent work now up on BigCartel!

Click here for my gallery to see my recent live paintings from the beach!
:)
Cosmic

New artwork at the beach!

The new owners of the beach cafe down at my local beach have just given it a beautiful new refit and, as well as having all the windows opened up to really enjoy the breathtaking views of Trevaunance Cove, recently commissioned me to paint all over the outside walls.

It does what it says on the wall!

I had free reign to paint what I wanted as long as I got certain words in there. So, I kept it simple and fitted the artwork and colours in with the locality and business as much as possible.

Breaking waves: Signage and beach graffiti combined.

As well as the cafe upstairs, Breakers also have the Ice Cream Joint. I painted this to look like a "surf shack" style ice cream parlour to fit in with the long surf culture and history the beach has.

The Ice Cream Joint "surf shack" hatch.

Breakers Beach Cafe can be found at Trevaunance cove, St Agnes, Cornwall and is open most days. 

The Essentiality of Nature...

When I began using spray paint to capture seascapes in 2014, I visited Port Isaac and sketched and painted at the harbour for a few days. The results weren't good. Occasionally I'd get a part of the scene to work and then pull my finger down on the cap a smidgen too hard and blow it all.
Lots of distractions too. I always happily answer questions when I'm working even this time when I really didn't want to be disturbed. Tourists and locals were stopping and asking me what I was painting with and although they'd seen spray paint they thought it must be different stuff as I wasn't using it for graffiti.

And then all of a sudden, this piece just happened. The mistakes began to work in my favour and I could see that this wild, almost untameable medium could be used to work on such small scale and achieve stunning results.

The Roots Culture Market, Porthtowan

Today was awesome! 

Thank you to Angio and Tim at Mount Pleasant Eco Park in Porthtowan for inviting me to today's Roots Culture Market.  A blend of local crafts people who bring their wares to trade alongside the popular Reggae Roast.

It wasn't easy with such a vibrant mix of traders and friends to distract me, but I managed to draw quite a bit of stuff  in the end and have a good chat with a lot of awesome people at the second Roots Culture Market. There is another one on Sunday 28th February, and two in March.

An inspiring day, full of really good vibes and interesting people.

I'll definitely be back!

Cosmic

The Zen Boardroom

The brief: "Being mindful of the chaos outside as we work with calm in the boardroom."

My third visit to Jambo's offices. A year since I painted two rooms in their building in Manchester I'm back in Truro installing a huge Zen Wave Garden mural in their boardroom and an Accounts/Contracts/IT themed mural in the accounts department.

Using low odour spray paint and a fume extractor means I can paint indoors as the company works around me.

Hot Off The Press

Colouring books are out! Hot off the press!

"A Street Art Colouring Book from Cornwall" is available now in selected outlets around Cornwall and on my Etsy page.

32 pages for all ages!

A Street Art Colouring Book from Cornwall !!

I have put together 32 pages of my street art ideas and designs as a colouring book. Available to order now for £5 from my Etsy page with FREE UK POSTAGE on all orders by Friday.

 Look out for the designs on the street. Happy colouring! 

The Space Needle

I completed this sketch on top of the Space Needle tower and included it in their interactive wall of images.


The word "Seattle" and the Space Needle tower are hidden in the sketch:

A photo posted by Cosmic (@cosmicimages) on Apr 22, 2015 at 2:55pm PDT

Time Lapse of Aggie Surf Shop Wall

I saw this last week. Markie from Aggie Surf Shop made this video when I painted the wall at the shop but I don't seem to have posted it on here.

It's a great video that shows the length of time it takes to actually paint a wall, and also how engaging it is for passers-by.

Cosmic wall at aggie surfshop from marcus lascelles on Vimeo.

The finished piece.

Treliske Lowen Ward Murals

Recently I created some artwork on the walls of some new rooms which are for teenage cancer patients to use while they receive treatment at Royal Cornwall Hospital Treliske.

They are part of the Lowen Ward's  £400,000 refurbishment and were funded by Young people's cancer charities Tanya's Courage Trust and LARF.

The wards were mainly brown before and very dull which, as you can imagine, is not the ideal kind of environment a young person undergoing treatments such as chemotherapy wants to be in for long periods of time.

I tried to produce artwork that would generate a natural feeling mixed with some imagination stimuli.

Singer and songwriter James Morrison (right) rocked up to open the new rooms.

Heartlands Urban Festival

Summer is over and just before we plunge headfirst into the depths of winter I need to crank up the blog. Stand back!

First up: Heartlands Urban Festival

Such a busy weekend with stacks going on like DJs, mini ramps, street skate section, tons of walls to paint on, bands, dance groups and tons more.

From West Briton: Article

Photo Stuart Burton: "Thank you so much for taking the time to teach my boys how to write with aerosols. You really gave them a day they'll never forget."

Photo Stuart Burton

Drawing on: Heartlands!!

POOL
This Saturday and Sunday (Sept 1st and 2nd) I will mostly be running interactive art demos at Heartlands in Pool, Cornwall.

COOL

Heartlands is a massive new project in Cornwall that celebrates the rich heritage to be found here. This urban festival is going to be a great showcase of lots of the "street culture" activities that Cornwall has to offer.

WALL
I have had a free-standing wall made especially for the occasion that is looking very exciting! The wall will remain on site to be a constant reminder of contemporary art being alive and well in Cornwall.

SCRAWL!
During the weekend people will be asked to help out with ideas, inspiration and to paint on the wall with me. No experience necessary, just a clear desire to contribute and create.

More info: West Briton, Cornwall In Focus, Cornwall's Coolest

Lanson Jungle

A hugely positive community project with Barefoot and people from Lanson (spelled Launceston) who work towards making their town brighter and more colourful.

The Barefoot team have dedicated the wall to Phil Lewitt. Unfortuately I never had the pleasure to meet Phil. By all accounts a local legend.

I approached this in much the same way as I do with all the Drawingonthings workshops, and drew as much inspiration as possible from everyone there and enlisted the help of everyone present to colour in! There were so many capable people at this project, ex fine-art teachers included (that's you Nev!) that we had the whole thing done in two days!

Ideas and painting by everyone present, aged from 1 to 82 years! A pleasurable experience. Thanks Lanson!

CN4C what's inside?

Yesterday I ran a Drawing On Things workshop to help the youth work team at CN4C (Cornwall Neighbourhoods for Change) in Redruth, Cornwall create visual communication for the street outside which reflects in an instant what goes on inside their building.

There was a lot to squeeze in. This place is not only a center for youth work but also a training center for adults, employment advice, arts, hotdesks, information, community activities, a radio station and much more.

In this picture there are signs bursting out of the roof which symbolize the kinds of beneficial activities that can be found within and the whole community coming together to get the most out of the center. We also made sign boards with the same coloured background as this main board.

'Tree Milestone' skate park wall

Okay, good workshop this one. Super-fast consultation last week at Mount Hawke skatepark with the group that were all set to paint this wall at their local park. It was the sort of design meeting where someone mentions a tree and it all snowballs from there.

Today I turned up at the park and helped them put their idea on the wall.
The village is called Threemilestone. It's three miles away from Truro, or something like that. One of the local mums, Kelly (an active member of the parish council) is working wonders to get all kinds of things done in this park to make it more of a user-friendly environment for the community, and getting this art wall built at the skate park area is just one of them.

An art wall is a dedicated wall for art, street art or graffiti. Some places have them free-standing which is so effective.

CN4C (Cornwall Neighbourhoods For Change)'s Simon and Sian work closely with Kelly and support her plans to make the area a more positive and vibrant place. So, when they heard of her idea for the wall, they called me in to run this Drawing On Things workshop.

New boards painted

Just finished these spray jobs today on two brand new boards for Nicola Bunt, who is competing in the Sundowners Sessions comp tomorrow at Lusty Glaze Beach in Newquay.

She won it last year, so I hope she wins it this year too with my artwork! Get down there and yell things at her with encouraging tones.

Reef (who have reef-ormed:) are playing after the comp.

aaaaargghh! it's The Bruton Dragon

Yesterday I went to Bruton in Somerset, about a mile from Glastonbury, and ran a Drawing On Things workshop for 8-16 year olds at the Bruton Festival of Arts which runs for over three weeks annually in this seemingly unassuming and quaint looking country village.

There are loads of activities and displays: art exhibitions, huge sculptures (see pic), even a writing sweatshop (which sounded amazing).

The organizers wanted to arrange something which could get the young people involved and had got in touch with me.
There were about 12 young people involved all at the same time. It was held in the garden of the local pub called "The Castle" and just down the road was this giant dragon sculpture. So we had our theme!

This workshop was fantastic and the preparation before I had arrived was first class (see pic) there was even a tarp ready to pull over the painting if it rained.

Bruton Festival of Arts is well worth a look. The village is a warm, friendly hive of creative activity. If you are anywhere near Somerset at all, call in!

Cornwall College Cosmic Corridor Collaboration

The corridor to The Treg, which leads from the canteen, needed brightening up. "Call Cosmic!" someone yelled.







The Treg is the common room at Cornwall College St Austell campus. To find it you have to navigate a short cellar-like route of corridors with plain white walls, a complete contrast of the atmosphere to be found once you are there.

This place has doors leading out to a garden, pool taples, ping-pong, advice and services, info on parties and is place to chill out during breaks from studies and lectures. In other words, the most important area of the college!



I visited the college during the first part of the term to meet students, and staff, to ask them what images they thought I should aim for. It soon became clear that I would have help from both students and members of staff.
During the consultation it became apparent that The Treg might one day move location so another part of the college, so we decided to do the artwork on boards which could be hung in the corridor and moved with the Treg if it ever changed location.



So, during the consultation we painted an octopus, a dragon and the student union logo made up of fish and waves on a large decorated board hanging on the wall inside the Treg itself. I was starting to understand that there would be some very interesting ideas to work with on this project.

I left some sheets of paper blutacked to the wall to collect more ideas and returned this week (during half term) and, with the help of students and staff created the images to be hung in the corridor.

I will add another post with pics when they are hung.