Gregoart doing Graffiti : don’t believe everything you see

Like I mentioned it in my previous post, I have been drawing using an iPhone or iPad for a couple of years now. Lately, I have been doing more analog drawing, using a good old piece of paper or canvas and brushes, pens and china ink. From time to time, I still like to use my iPhone to try new things. With the Adobe ideas application, you can import an existing picture to use as a background. This gave me the idea to do a graffiti on the wall of a New York City building, without even needing to do it for real and taking the risk of getting caught by the NYC police. Actually, I used one of my own picture of a Lower East Side building I shot last December. I could have used a picture found on Google but at least I can say I sampled my own pictures and didn't steal the picture taken by someone else. I then drew on the facade of the building and the result is quite realistic as you can see.  

I could have posted it like a real graffiti without mentioning I did it on a iPhone in the comfort of my home, as the resulting picture is quite similar to a picture of an actual graffiti. If you happen to see the real building you will see there is only the tiny blue character graffiti on the facade. Actually, you can also use Google Street to verify if the graffiti is for real or not, as this digital tool is a way to find out of a digital illustration tool has been used to create a fake street art piece. Anyway, it should remind you not to believe everything you see on the web. 

Looking back at this picture, I realize that what is the most astonishing when it comes to graffiti lays more in the process of creating the initial artwork in a blackbook and spraying a large scale piece of wall to realize it. Then, last but not least, you can admire the incredible results on site. And for those who couldn't make it, there is the chance to watch a picture of the real street art, hoping this is a real piece of street art and not a fake one like mine. By the way, salute to all the graffiti artists doing it for real in New York City and all over the world.

Digital sketching by an analog guy

In these days and age of digital, I must admit I sometimes feel a bit lost. As a close to 40 guy, digital was not part of my childhood and I realize a 6 years old child knows more about digital than I do (but doesn't have a clue about tapes and atari video games). I don’t try to escape this digital world and I am even quite active on social media as this is a good opportunity to share, to communicate, and to be inspired. Yet I still listen to analog music on vinyl, and I have ben doing so way before this so called vinyl revival. I also draw without computer and never learned to use Photoshop, Illustrator and all this stuff. On the other hand, I like gadgets and was among the first guys to own the 1st iPhone around me, importing it from the States six month before its release in Switzerland. And, in 2009, I discovered the Brushes app, a drawing software designed for iPhone, really easy to use, and since I always liked to draw small, the screen size of the smartphone didn’t boher me at all. The only issue with these digital drawings was that you couldn’t print the drawings as the resolution was not good enough. But besides that I had a lot of fun with this.

This was later thanks to a drawing software on iPad that I started to get back even more to drawing. Unlike Photoshop or Illustrator, the Adobe Ideas iPad app is really intuitive and easy to use vector drawing software, and I like to use my fingers to draw on the screen, without a pen and digital drawing board, like I was a child doing finger painting. As manual as it may seem, the digital drawings had to be printed in order to be real. I had  even the pleasure of seeing my printed artworks exhibited twice and it was really interesting to get feedback about these illustrations. Not only about the drawings themselves, but also about the fact that it was not handdrawn. The criticism reminded me of the one against electronic music : « this is not art. Everyone can do it without training. » Infact, people who knew I used an iPhone and iPad to draw didn’t know how much I am able to draw manually. This is one of the reasons I did some live iPad drawing and let others use the application sot hey can see for themselves how easy or difficult it could be.

I must admit that the simple fact that you can delete things easily, can come back to a previous stage of your drawing is really confortable and I wish I could do that with a « real » drawing or painting. Yet, I like to doodle digitally and make quick and dirty sketches like the above illustration called « Feeling blue » I did in something like one minute. It was printed and is for sale as a 10 piece limited edition forex piece. As it was done on an iPad, there is no real original drawing, the print is the only physical support of the drawing. In fact, in order to own a real iPad drawing, you should buy my iPad, which is not for sale ! But feel free to purchase one of the iPad drawings printed on Forex, contact me for availability .

Tribute to the Hieroglyphics

As you maybe saw on my website gallery, I love music (I am a vinyl collector not to say junkie and I dj) and love to do music related illustrations. This has been a theme for a long time and this year I started to draw a couple of pieces integrating the logo of one of my favourite hip hop crews : the Hieroglyphics from Oakland.

View fullsize

Before the Pharcyde, Jurassic Five or the Stones Throw artists, the underrated Hieroglyphics crew has been ruling the west coast underground hip hop scene since the early 90's, with members such as Del the Funky Homosapian and Souls of Mischief. Even if you don’t know Del, you already heard him as the main rapper in Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett’s Gorillaz project which gave him a big mainstream exposure even if a lot of people don't have a clue who was actually rapping. He released a couple of great albums and was also the main rapper in the first science fiction hip hop project : Deltron 3030. He is also Ice Cube cousin but never went the G-Funk route, releasing instead tracks full of clever rhymes, one of a kind flow and voice over complex yet funky beats. He is also a comic books nerd and learnt Japanese just to kill time.

Souls of Mischief didn’t enjoy as much mainstream success as Del but they have been releasing quality albums since their first one back in 1993 (« 93 til infinity »). Contrary to most of 90's artists they even released some of their best releases inthe 2000’s, one with superproducer Prince Paul, « Montezuma’s Revenge » in 2009, with a beautiful cover artwork by artist Steven Lopez (an artwork you can see painted live in this impressive timelapse video). Their last album to date was released in 2014 with production by multi-instrumentalist Adrian Younge (« There is only now »)

Not only did the Hieroglyphics crew continuously release great music, they also have an incredible logo, who was actually created by Del himself and which I incorporated in the 2 above illustrations. They even have their own celebration day, the annual Hiero Day whose latest edition was held on September 7th in their hometown of Oakland (no, this is not yet a national holiday but maybe one day :) 

Gemini mood

One of the recurrent themes in my artwork is duality. I like to draw characters who can be considered as « two face » (more like the Batman vilain than the two face joke in Seinfeld if you know what I mean), with an obscure part of the face hidden deep in the shadows. I didn’t realize this before working on the archives of my artworks. Below are some examples of these two face characters you can find right here on my website gallery. There are some more I posted on Instagram and there are much more to come.

I am not really into astrology but nonetheless I must inform you that I am a Gemini. Maybe this is a reason why I keep on driving characters with a double personnality like mine. I hope that you can dig it even if you are not a gemini. Speaking of gemini, the title of this post is inspired by the Weldon Irvine track "Gemini Mood" off his masterpiece "In Harmony" (Strata East 1974).

Welcome to my blog

Thank you for visiting my website and this blog. It has been a long time since I ran a blog (last time was the stone age of blogging back in 96 !) and I am realy excited to get back into it. You will find posts about my drawings of course, providing some insights on the making of specific artworks and my creative process in general. You will find revelant news about Gregoart (forthcoming events, exhibitions). I will also write about my personnal hall of fame, the artists who inspired me, not only in the field of visual art but also musicians whose tracks and albums constitute the soundtrack to my life.