Monday, May 10, 2010

Puttiki poster

Long time no posting, I've been busy being a teacher here in Thailand but over our extensive school holidays I completed the poster for the "Return of Puttiki" art-show and cocktail bender.

I started with a vague idea about mixing actual props and models with vintage photography in a mens adventure magazine/exploitation film poster style. Sam from Puttiki had mentioned he would like a Moai on the poster somewhere so I started to build a cardboard Maoi head.

Rough outlines...

....nose and mouth..

..and ears..


..and almost a perfect fit, but no eye holes so not suitable for wearing while operating a motorbike. Not that would stop anyone here in Thailand where ten on a moped and the raffia bike helmet rule.

Adding more shape with newspaper..

..face completed and hat stone hat added. I tried to get a stone effect with wads of glue soaked toilet paper, but it failed to dry in a pleasing style, so I just went with a normal coat of newspaper.

Coat of house hold emulsion as a base coat for painting..

..undercoat of faux wood grain..

..then the details in bold black paint.
Now that the head was finished I had to work out the final composition, I found a picture of Betty Page in distress and planned to have the Moai man added to the picture in a suitably menacing pose.

I dressed my self and had the missus take some scary pictures of me...

..the pictures worked out well but the Betty Page picture was not of a high enough resolution for the project. So I searched through my exploitation poster folders and decided to try a single figure design.


Then with a days worth of photoshop jiggery pokery and I ended up with this..

I used design elements (aka nicked bits) from this vintage tiki menu, it was challenging to replicate on the computer the old hand drawn screen print.

Then I sent of the image to Sam who added some final fantastic touches to make the finished flyer. I think it worked out rather well.



Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Tiki Today 27 March to 19 June 2010


Two of my paintings are taking part in the Tiki Today exhibition in Scunthorpe at the
20-21 Visual Arts Centre, they are having a night of tiki celebration on Saturday 5th of June.