'Never Judge...?' Group Show At Stolenspace.

I'm really pleased to be part of this group show at Stolenspace gallery London. The brief was to create an original artwork to the traditional format and size of a Penguin book for a novel of my choice. I of course chose Arthur Conan Doyle's 'The Lost World'. I did a neat little pencil drawing of a dinosaur made up of London's Natural History Museum.



Here's more info on the show, private view and the list of great artists involved -

StolenSpace private View Invitation - ‘Never Judge...?’
A Group Show In Association with Penguin Books - Thursday 2nd December, 6-9pm

Artists exhibiting
Alex Fakso, Alexander Korzer Robinson, Alexone, Alex Trochut, All City Media, Anders Nilsen, Andrew Council, Angela Lizon, Anthony Burril, Anthony Lister, Arth Daniels, Blek Le Rat, Brad Downey, Brian Cairns, Buff Monster, C215, Chris Stain, Chistopher Silas Neal, CUM, Cyclops, DEM, D*FACE, David Bray, David Gentleman, Dave Kinsey, David Walker, Dominique Holmes, Eelus, EINE, Elsa Mora, EMA, Evan Hecox, Faris Badwan, Filthy Luker, Gabriel Dubois, Gary Taxali, Gerald Laing, Graham Dolphin, gray318, Hanna Melin, Hellovon, Ian Stevenson, James Alexander Burbidge, Jaybo, Jeff Antebi, Jeff Fisher, Jim Houser, Jonathan Darby, Jon Burgerman, John Pound, John Slade, Julie Verhoeven, Hanna Melin, Kai & Sunny, Kate Gibb, Kathryn Macnaughton, Kid Acne, Kristian Hammerstad, KRSN, Mark Dean Veca, Mark Herald, Marta Cerda, Matt Eco, Matt Small, Methane Studios, Michael De Feo, Mike Stilkey, Mr Jago, Mysterious Al, Mudwig, Parra, Pete Fowler, Rico, Ripo, ROA, Ronzo, Roxanne Jackson, Rul/Vomitorium, Russell Maurice, Russ Mills, Ryan Bubnis, Sam Flores, SAN, Shepard Fairey, Sickboy, Skull Phone, Steff Plaetz, Sylvia Ji, Tara McPherson, The London Police, Tim Bessell, Tom J Newell, Toshikazu Nozaka, Tristan Eaton, Usugrow, Viktor Vauthier, Vinnie Nylon, Will Barras, WK Interact, Word To Mother, Zosen

The age old proverb is easier said than done, when choosing a read who can't be swayed by good cover art
the cover after all has the job of explaining thousands of words in an instant.
StolenSpace in association with Penguin Books plan to celebrate the art of the book cover
with a show entitled ' Never Judge?’
For this exhibition we will be filling the gallery with original book covers exclusively created for this show
by our favourite artists from around the world, there will also by gyclée prints available from some of the pieces
created. The show promises to be a visual feast working in conjunction with Penguin Books and their upcoming
Penguin Essentials project


For an advance preview of work available please contact Leon available at the gallery +44 207 247 2684 email: leon@stolenspace.com

Some Sketches For My Latest Paintings

Thought I would put these sketches up that I did for a few of the canvases I painted for the CHG show. They have something about them that I like.

Parallel Evolutions

So, here are all the paintings that I did for my loft show that opened last week along with Melissa Formans 'Keepers Of Creation' show at Corey Helford Gallery LA. All photo's are by Dunstan Baker - Big thanks to him. Also thanks and big ups etc go out to - Jan, Richard Scarry, Iain Seller, James, Rich, Tessa, Chinals and all boys dept crew, Rowdy, Everly Dark, Emily and of course Liz and Felix!

All pieces are acrylic and spray paint on canvas. Sizes are under each pic. You can get a better look at the pieces over on my flickr.


LA Dinosaur - 90cm w x 60cm h


LA Heart - 50cm w x 60cm h


Tank Heart 2 - 50cm w x 60cm h


Tank Sacred Heart - 50cm w x 60cm h


Tank Skull - 50cm w x 60cm h


Panther - 50cm w x 60cm h


Battle Bunny - 50cm w x 30cm h


Battle Bird - 50cm w x 30cm h


Carasaurolophus - 50cm w x 30cm h


Carasaurus - 50cm w x 30cm h

New Juxtapoz Interview.

There's a new interview with me on Juxtapoz - check it out!

This photo of me beavering away on a canvas is by Mr.45RPM.

Loft Show At Corey Helford Gallery LA - November 13th.

It's been a while since my last blog post as I have been busy preparing a new collection of paintings for my first show of significant size in the States! For further information please contact my friend and director of the gallery Richard Scarry at rscarry@gmail.com


COREY HELFORD GALLERY PROUDLY PRESENTS
UK STREET ARTIST & ILLUSTRATOR
ANDY COUNCIL
"PARALLEL EVOLUTIONS"

OPENING RECEPTION: SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 13TH
Andy Council will debut ten new works for his first exhibition with Corey Helford Gallery, entitled "Parallel Evolutions". Based on his fascination with urban myths, beasts, dinosaurs and more, Council's vibrant and playful imagery will delightfully dominate the loft space. Council adds, "Mankind's creations often mirror those of natures. In my work manmade machines and cities are exaggerated and evolved further still into fantastical creatures and organic forms. This
latest body of work has natural forms made up of common place human creations of the modern world that are often destructive to ourselves and the planet."
Advance online previews are available upon request at jch@coreyhelfordgallery.com
Best, Jan Corey Helford

COREYHELFORDGALLERY.COM

8522 Washington Boulevard
Culver City, CA 90232
310.287.2340

More Wall Painting at Saint Annes Park Primary

So, last week I went in to Saint Annes Park Primary school in Bristol and painted a big old owl in the library and today I went back and painted a dirty great Bristol Dino on the playground wall! Here it is -



I was asked to do quite a general Bristol type beastie, so fitted a few landmarks on it - Clifton Suspension Bridge, Wills Building, Cabot Tower, Tobacco Factory, SS Great Britain, coloured houses and Westmoreland House with BC graff on it. Turned out OK despite the heavy showers and having to dive under the shelter of a tree now and then. I put balloons in the piece also, even though I'm not that keen on them murals. Ah well, tis a school mural.

Here's the original design I did for the piece. I altered the final wall painting to have a different angle on the neck so that the creature could fill the wall better. Dinosaur I loosely based the creature on is Pachycephalosaurus.

St Annes Park Primary School Library Owl

I went into St Annes Park Primary School in Bristol a few weeks back and had a chat to the pupils about doing a mural creature of mine for their library. They went away and drew some ideas which I went through and came up with this from -



Library book owl! The owl is made of. as you might have guessed, books, but also pencils and the words 'Learn, Share, Enjoy' which I think is the school moto. I went in yesterday and sprayed him up on the wall. I ran out of time to do the falling books and leaves but reckon he's a good un still.

Print Signing At Niche Frames, Bristol Saturday 21st August

I be doing a signing of his new illustration 'Planet Bristol' at Niche Frames in Bristol on Saturday afternoon. The print is an edition of 100 and features lots of Bristol type buildings and landmarks. Who knows, maybe your house is on it?

Planet Bristol is for the Bristol Green Doors event which is about domestic green refurbishment throughout all areas of the city. All profits from the print sales go to the project.

Come along and check out the work up close, have a chin wag with me and maybe purchase a print. It will be a truly memorable occasion....

There is a facebook event page here. Below is a pic of the extra gert large version of the print that is in the window of Niche Frames at the moment and the notice about my in store signing.

Dare Devil Divas

My partner Liz's production company Drastic Productions is working on an exciting new project - Dare Devil Divas! Here's a bit of info on the project - more is on the Drastic Productions blog (link above).


Dare Devil Divas is Drastic Production’s fabulously frivolous explosive new project! We are producing a fantastic show in Novemeber featuring dazzling daredevil feats of female prowess. We will be working with a group of women participants (up to 15) over 6 weeks who will learn about vaudeville, cabaret, physical theatre, burlesque & aerial performance. We have invited a team of top professionals to run specific masterclasses and to perform at the event.

Liz asked me to produce a poster/flyer design for the show that had a kind of Stunt or movie poster feel to it and features some of the performers and what they will be doing in the show. Here it is!



Drastic Productions is also on Twitter, here!

Meat Market

Another thing I did a while back now was some more illustrations for Russian magazine vokrug Sveta. The last illustration I did for them was of a British pub, which was fine by me as I love pubs. This one was more tricky as it had to be of Smithfield meat market in London. Tricky because - 1. I live in Bristol and 2. I don't eat meat! Errm, I got a friend of mine to take research pics to work from...

Weapon Of Choice at Howies Bristol

A couple of weeks back I went along to do a spot of live drawing at the Weapon Of Choice show in the Howies store in Bristol. It's a nice big exhibition space there and loads of the old live drawings from the previous WOC club nights were up there. They all looked really good up together, the black and white colour scheme of them making a really cohesive show.

I finally managed to finish off the canvas I started painting at the WOC gig featuring the Furious Five a while back. I'm glad I did as I don't like leaving things unfinished and it turned out alright.



I then had some time left and there was a space to fill on the main wall, so came up with a kind of Bristol Triceratops head on the spot. See if you can spot it!



'Big Ups' to all who painted that night and the WOC boys. Cheers to Sylvia Meller for the pics.

Mural At The Meriton

This week I have been working with a group of young women at the Meriton in Bristol to produce a mural to go outside the centre.

The Meriton is a specialist school based in Bristol focused on providing education, support, mentoring and advice to teenage girls and young parents. Working with pregnant girls and young mothers both pre and post 16 in the Bristol, Bath and the South West region the Meriton's aim is to protect the welfare of all children, including unborn children and vulnerable young adults.

I went in and worked with the group to come up with one of my 'Lots Of Stuff' designs to represent the school. We took photos, brainstormed, made lists and drew sketches. I then went away and looked through all the ideas and information and came up with this Butterfly design.



I returned with a bag full of spraypaint and had the group help me paint the piece. Everyone worked hard and here's the final painted piece which we are very happy with!



It's a shame the trees in the way, can't see the top bits. If I had time I would go back with a saw and get a better pic.

Planet Bristol

This is Planet Bristol, my illustration for the Bristol Green Doors event. It's a kind of a more complicated version of the Green Globe illustration I did last year. The event is about domestic green refurbishment throughout all areas of the city, so the illustration features lots of Bristol type houses and landmarks, installation of solar panels, insulation etc and people getting together and communicating. More information on Bristol Green Doors here.

The piece was as you can imagine very complicated to do and a bit of a headache. Needless to say there was lots of swearing in its creation. I started off by sketching out the various different types of housing around Bristol based around reference pics that Stu from the project sent me.





Then it was a case of placing all these buildings into a globe along with parks and landmarks roughly positioned to be in where they would be in North, East, South and West Bristol. I did this by tracing off a globe shape with perspective lines A2 size on my lightbox. I then worked over the top of this putting in key points and roads. This took several attempts and quite a bit of guess work. this first rough looked more like the Death Star.



I had to scrap bits and start again, eventually came up with this rough which I then went on to add more detail with in pen and colour up using the limited colour scheme that I was given to work with.



All in all, its a bit of a beast! There should be Ltd edition prints available to buy of it soon. A bigger version of it where the details of it can be seen better is on my Flickr.

Battle Bunny at Glos-tonbury, Golden Lion, Bristol

Battle Bunny is the latest in my war themed series of illustrations and paintings. The running rabbit is cute yet made up of tanks, helicopter gunships, tank buster planes and bombs! I was really pleased with how this design turned out so decided to paint it at the Glos-tonbury Festival yesterday. It's called the Glos-tonbury festival as it takes place on the same weekend as Glastonbury festival but is at the Golden Lion pub on the Gloucester Road in Bristol. The festival has live Skateboarding, Graffiti, Breakdancing, plus food stalls, clothing stalls, facepainting and Djs.

The painting turned out alright on a scorching day. Took me ages as usual and was last to finish as usual also. Could have done some bits better blah blah, but over all pleased with it.

Shout out to James for sorting it out. Painterz - Soker, Hemper, Nik Ill, Rich T, 45 RPM, China Mike and the Jago. 'Big Up' as it were to all who came down including Mike and Steff, Tails, Tess and Jo and Roxy and co. Special mention goes of course to my wife Liz and our little un Felix, who picked up a can of paint and tried to help Rich T on his piece.

Rowdy Rooftop Burner Fund!

A little while ago fellow Farmyardy and good friend Rowdy lost everything he owned in a fire! There is now a benefit auction to help him back on his feet and I have donated an original painting to it.

Here's what Steal From Work who are organising the auctions have to say about it...


So, there are plenty of charity events, plenty of causes worth fighting for, whole countries at war.... But sometimes it’s just about helping your friends, helping those you love. And here we’re taking the opportunity to help one of our best friends.

If you don’t know, here’s the introduction. Rowdy is one of the longest standing players in UK graffiti, supporting the scene and playing his part in what has now turned into a global phenomenon. He has painted with the best of them, in fact is one of the best of them, always sticking true to his vision, rocking his own style, never selling out his ideas. Recently he walked out of his house, which also served as his studio and when he returned a half hour later, everything had been burned to the ground. EVERYTHING! ID, money, clothes, personal possessions, art, the ability to make art, everything gone!

So, we’re taking this as an opportunity to support someone who has so readily supported us as a scene by auctioning some art to help him get back to a position where he can do what he does best, making art.

It’s a testament to his popularity and reputation that so many artists have donated work to this auction. All work has been personally donated by the artists and the galleries that represent them: Banksy, Paul Insect, Swoon, Sickboy, Hush, Espo, the whole Burning Candy crew and a whole bunch more... So, it’s your chance to buy something beautiful and at the same time help out someone who has helped in his way to make graffiti and street art what it is today.

There is information on all the auctions and pieces available on their site. My piece is part of auction 2 which starts Friday 25th June and ends Monday 5th July.

Steal from works ebay profile where the auction is taking place is here.

My piece up for auction is the rather fine 'Styracasubway'. Acrylic on canvas, 61 x 51cm, Signed by the artist. Happy bidding!



PS-There's also a Banksy print in the auction too in case any of you are interested in that.

Secret Wars - Bristol Vs Malmo

Another round of Secret Wars went down at Start The Bus in Bristol a couple of weeks ago. I was determined to put in a better performance than I did when up against Glasgow a while back. I met up with Sepr and we came up with the idea of Ciderzilla versus a little Viking dude as what we would do to battle the Swedish team from Malmo. Dylan Shipley got called into action on our team at the last minute and decided on doing a warrior farmer character.



When it came round to the night I managed to hold it down on the drinks a fair bit and we went into action. I find it a bit nerve wracking being up on stage drawing with loads of people looking at you. It's also difficult as one of the rules of Secret Wars is that you can't work from a sketch. Needless to say, Bristol beat Malmo 2-1. Sepr and Dylan worked very quickly and added a comedy cock that must have helped swing the vote. I added value by doing crap drunken dancing. Well, what d'ya expect - I was drunk on a stage in Corn Street with loads of people watching me.






Photos by Sylvia Meller.

Pub Illustrations for Vokrug Sveta Magazine

A while back I was asked to produce illustrations for yet another Russian magazine - Zokrug Sveta. It's similar to National Geographic and one of the features is on places around the world that Russian people may not be familiar with. One such place is a typical British pub and they chose me to illustrate and write the double page feature! An ideal subject for me as I enjoy frequenting such establishments very much. I chose to base the illustrations on my local - Inn On The Green. It was an ideal pub to choose as there are loads of different beers on tap, different rooms, beer mats on the wall and a garden. I wrote a bit about me and my wife's favourite crisps that we buy there to go with our alcholic beverages also.

Collaboration with Acerone at Upfest 2010

I was really pleased to get an email from top Bristol artist Acerone asking if I wanted to do a collaboration piece at Upfest this year. I really like his work so of course replied that I would. Acer is a top notch Graffiti writer and photographer. In recent years he has been producing murals based around his photos of Bristol scenes at night.

We met for a couple of beers and agreed that if he got a shot with a recognisable Bristol landmark in it I could then get one of my dinosaurs made of things in there.

Acer got a good shot of the Portway in Bristol which has the Clifton Suspension Bridge in the background. I drew up this car dinosaur rushing forward to fit in the scene.





We photoshopped the dinosaur in and decided that it could do with something to the left of the scene, so I added in a little one made of engines and exhausts! We made a mock up of how it would look on the wall/boards.

When it came to painting the piece I was really interested to see how Acer works. We went down to the Tobacco Factory the night before Upfest and painted the wall off black. When it got dark Acer projected the piece onto the wall and painted out the areas that would be filled in colour with white emulsion. After that was done, still using the projector, we marked out areas of detail.

We returned the next day and worked really hard painting the piece alongside all the other artists painting that day. We used a combination of acrylic and brush with spraypaints. It was a real mash up of styles and working techniques and we think it worked out really well. Stay tuned for further collabs with Mr Acer!



All photos in this post are by Acerone.

Sailor Jerry Dino

Last month I took a train down to Southampton to do a spot of live drawing at a Sailor Jerry art event at Pulcinella's bar. I got the design together on the train down due to lack of time and it came together nicely in the end. I sort of managed to fuse my artwork style with that of Sailor Jerrys tattoo flash. I got this Triceratops made up of Rum bottles and a Sailor Jerry style cow girl riding on its back! This drawing was of course fuelled by Rum. I enjoyed having a few cheeky swigs on the train home too.

Big thankyou to Lloyd for sorting this out.

Reject Designs

Here's a couple of designs that got rejected as potential T Shirt designs. I rather like them and think they could perhaps be used elsewhere or developed. They are of a great outdoors type theme and feature lots of mountains, fields, trees and streams. The one of a man is another move into human forms. Looks a bit like Bigfoot which is pretty cool.