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.

Trewirgie Junior School Murals

The Trewirgie "Cornish Studies" Mural.

Earlier this year I completed a series of three murals at Trewirgie Junior School in Redruth.

"Creativity and Watersports" A mural about favourite leisure activities.

This was such a great project. The pupils involved chose and designed all the content and it was their choice to theme the murals on their studies.

For each wall, a design team of pupils came up with the ideas and directed me through the sketches straight onto the wall during a consultation workshop, and returned to class. I called them back when it was time to colour.

Most of the paint that was applied was the work of the pupils involved. Really, in a way, all I did was help with outlines and tidying up the edges!

Most had never used spray paint before and they responded well to a responsible introduction to this versatile medium.

The "Trewirgie Regal" playground theatre space mural. Designed by Trewirgie pupils.

These workshops are hugely beneficial in using drawing as a visual skill which supports other communication skills like reading and writing.

Here is an write-up from the West Briton newspaper.

Have a pasty n bung a few outlines in. #cosmicimages #wall @montana_colors #cornwall #mural #outlines #colours #spraypaint #spraycans

A video posted by Cosmic (@cosmicimages) on Jun 17, 2015 at 10:48am PDT

It's Smallworld after all!

Smallworld May 2015
This awesome conscientious wind and solar powered festival takes place in Kent twice a year, in May and August. It is put together by the people who bring the Smallworld Solar Stage to larger festivals like Glastonbury, Buddhafield, and Secret Garden Party.

This May at Smallworld I did some spray paint art workshops and painted a few other things (if they stayed still long enough).

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

Surfboard Art School!

Get this! These kids at Richard Lander School in Truro get to make their own surfboards at school.

How classrooms should look!

And paint them with me, before they get them glassed at Best Ever surfboards in St Agnes.

The Surfboard Manufacture course is a choice on the school's popular activities week, during the last week of term. 

It was expertly run in the DT rooms. The pupils got to shape their own boards from blanks in whatever style they want. All the boards were really good shapes. I let them do the same with the sprays, and go for any style and content they wanted. Some of the ideas where pure genius!

They designed their own decals!

Paint pen dept.

Boards being glassed back at the factory.

Demo spray.

MOR artwork!

MOR Surf Lodge in Newquay called me up to paint a unique mural on the front wall, which will be a 'sunset beach in the evening'.

It has amazing sunsets from the front beer garden. So, the beach, sunset, the company logo (an "O" with a 'tor' above it -from MOR, which is celtic for something) and brand, surfing and Newquay were all in the brief.

It's opening any day now. They have a board store and tons of quirky additions to make your trip 100% ace and memorable! It does look like it's going to be a very cool place.

Even if you live in Cornwall it's well worth a visit. The bar is open to non-residents and, if you're enjoying yourselves, ditch the car and get a room!

I also did a "60 second makeover" on a chest of drawers for the interior designer while I was there.

Directions: Get to Newquay, find Mount Wise (the highest road which runs along the ridge of the town from the roundabout, before south fistral, to the traffic lights, before the railway station) and look out for a massive blue and white building with this artwork on the front!

More photos, links and info to come when MOR Surf Lodge, Newquay opens to the public.

Being crafty to be fayre.

Today I will be drawing on things at the craft fayre at the Riverbank in Truro. Expect spray paint designs on recycled skateboards and prints, among other stalls of knitwear, buttons and doilies. (I hope I'm joking!)

1-4 pm The Riverbank

Old Bridge Street, Truro, Cornwall
sat nav:  TR1 2AQ

http://www.theriverbanktruro.co.uk/

'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.

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!

The Edusk8 crew do another bit on the wall

And this time, it's personal!

This week the Edusk8 crew got to do the second session of the big front wall at Mount Hawke Skate Park in Cornwall. To read about the first session and Edusk8 at Mount Hawke click here.

We took a slightly different approach this time. To warm up, we doodled. Ten of us drew whatever we felt like drawing, with a variety of marker pens, on our own sheets of card for well over an hour. Amazingly, most of this was in complete silence. They needed hardly any prompting.

We wanted to create something that had a peice of it created by each of us. And we came up with an idea for a totem pole-type image. or a totem pile, as someone suggested.

So we played the surrealist's game Exquisite Corpse with a theme of a totem pole, but with ten pictures rotating round the table simultaneously.

Then we all chose our favourite peice from the ten finished pictures and stuck them together so we each had designed a peice of the image.

After some lunch, we went out into the bright sunshine (and the hottest car park in the history of mankind!) and painted it on the wall.

Young artists at CN4C activities day.

Cornwall Neighbourhoods for Change (CN4C) is a tenant led regeneration organisation tackling issues connected with social conditions and the local environment.

Yesterday they held a massive activities day at the Astro turf pitch in Penzance for local young people from some of the more disadvantaged communities in the area.

A drawingonthings workshop was on hand for the creative and discerning.


We had a huge sheet of tarpaulin as a roof, just incase the rain (which was sitting in huge dark clouds above us the whole time) actually fell.


So, the theme for the workshop was "outdoors".


I helped a bit with some outlines and details but all of the designs and ideas were from those taking part and all of the colouring was completed by them too!


Amazingly, the rain held off until we were packing up.


There was a huge amount of effort from the young people involved plus a lot of laughter and serious skill development! Vibrant results like this highlight the importance of art activities in everyday life.

The artwork is to be hung in the CN4C offices in Redruth.

Edusk8 crew kick-start giant wall project!

Mount Hawke Skatepark outside walls, Day 1: Edusk8...

Part of the secret of Mount Hawke's success is the education facilities. The world famous rural Cornish skatepark has a great set-up for young people, who would otherwise not be in education, employment or training of any kind. They call this side of the skatepark 'Edusk8'.

This year I will be helping various groups of people who use the skatepark to decorate the massive blue wall in the front car park. The Edusk8 crew went first and his project leapt into action on Tuesday this week.

We had mammoth doodle collaborations in the conference room first and then went out and continued on the wall. Everybody who was there took part and many had never used spray paint before and quite a few were telling me they couldn't draw when we started.

We got so much done in one day. I was amazed at how fast everybody worked!