Contact with Practitioners.

     As part of the contact with practitioners part of PDP, I decided that I would have a go at aiming high and sent an email with a short few questions to tattooer/illustrator Liam Sparkes.

     Questions were mostly concerned with his career path; from designing flyers to making tattoos, and how he progressed from one to the next.

     Unfortunately, since he's a busy chap these days: travelling allover the world and what not, I 
haven't received a reply.

     Fortunately however, I recently found a Russian website "SABRA" that has interviews with tattoo artists such as Scott Move, Maxime Buchi and, luckily for me: Liam Sparkes. The questions posed by the interviewers at SABRA are not too dissimilar from my own, so in a way I suppose I've gained some of the insight I wanted.

     If you fancy, click the image. That's were these interviews can be found:

Website research.

     Next semester I will be crafting my very own proper website, so before then I thought I'd best look at some existing ones and decide what I like about them.

     I began my research by looking in the favourites folder of my browser (for obvious reasons), however, it turned out that almost all of them were simple social network pages; which I think says something about modern society, but isn't much use to me at the minute.

     In the end I turned to the all-powerful and omnipresent overlord "Google" to aid me in my quest for website-based knowledge, and I found some quite interesting examples:

•      Duncan X's website, duncanx.com, was the first to draw me in. The homepage features a simple, black on white, hand rendered image which gives off an all-round air of simplistic luxury, much like the packaging of fancy, overpriced goods. However, the navigation of the site lets it down. Links are often hard to decipher and occasionally open up new tabs for no real reason.     Aesthetically though, this site is mostly rather pleasing to the old eyeballs due to it's simplicity, which is something I will keep in mind.
•     Shortly after I was told to check out mrgordo.com. Again it features a simplistic layout but is much easier to navigate as there is a clearly labelled sidebar that takes you where you want to go. Similarly, valtastic.com and thequietrevolution.co.uk employ the use of sidebars as a means of navigation and I think in terms of a website intended to display artwork this works very well, as images are allowed to take centre stage while the boring bits are neatly tucked away but not out of sight.

     I plan to continue picking apart websites as I peruse the internet, but so far the conclusion I've come to is this: keep it simple, keep it pretty.

Liam Sparkes.

Liam Sparkes - Illustrator, Tattooer, Moustache Grower.

     I only discovered this man's work a few weeks ago, but I love it, and after watching a short interview he'd done I quickly decided I want to be just like him when I grow up.
     As well as being the proud owner of a fine moustache and rad collection of tattoos, he also started out as an illustrator, making various bits of artwork for flyers, t-shirts bands etc. before moving on to a more rewarding career as a tattooer.

Liam Sparkes

Liam Sparkes

     If you like his work, which if you have functioning eyeballs I'm sure you do, you should either buy some prints of it or go meet him and get some of it tattooed onto you.
     Alternatively you can go here to browse some photos of his work.

Liam Sparkes Documentary from Ben Taylor on Vimeo.

     I imagine influence of his work will slowly rear it's head in my own.

Treecreeper.

     For the past few days now I've been frantically Googling pieces of information that I got from Wilf, trying to come up with something I can make into an image. Unfortunately, I find buildings insanely boring to draw, even really cool ones. However, one of my favourite stories of Wilf's took place on Reddish Vale; Stockport's very own wilderness. And, following another epiphany dream, I concocted an image in my brain that wouldn't make me want to kill myself through boredom after spending hours on it.
     I set about researching Reddish Vale; how it looked back then and what birds there were to be found (the story was about birds if you didn't guess). I even paid it a visit and saw myself a heron, which is weird since it's cold as balls out this time of year.

     Anyway, I discovered there are actually a whole bunch of gnarly birds that convene there, not just feetless pigeons and gulls..

Greater Spotted Woodpecker

Cormorant

Kestrel

Goosander (this one is dead obviously)

Grey Heron

Kingfisher

Treecreeper

     Those are but a few but they're probably the prettiest and have the best names (treecreeper is my favourite).

     Obviously I haven't referenced any of these images but they're from the internet so I'm sure you'll be able to find them.

Adrian Baxter

     I don't know how I ended up on this guy's facebook page, but I do know that his work is amazing. There's a ton of time consuming detail and texture rammed into his drawings and the majority of them are black and white, have weird/ occult subjects and are riddled with symbolism. What's not to like?

     I recommend you stalk him on facebook.

Luke Jinks

     Recently came across some delightful flash sheets by Luke Jinks. He studied illustration in Bristol and is now a tattoo artist at Infinite Ink in Coventry. 

     Quite like the traditional tattoo style of these and the contemporary aesthetic that's somehow mixed in. Think it might be the muted/bright contrast in the colour scheme.

     For more bits by him click on this.
     To see some of the tattoos he's done, have a spy of his facebook page.

Guy Le Tattooer

     Found this chap whilst perusing the internet the other day. He recently had an exhibit in Paris which featured several silicon moulds of his arm that he had then tattooed and framed.
     I really like the realism of them; they look like an actual dude's arms have been pulled off and preserved in formaldehyde. Plus I'm obsessing over tattoo as a medium at the minute. Lovely.

      Click here to see a bit more of his work.