The streets of cities can be quite boring and dull. That’s why it’s fun to see them being brought to life by amazing and creative street artists. Not all people love graffiti, but it’s difficult to not like these unique and magnificent creations by Pierrot (Scaf).
The artist creates amazing 3D graffiti illusions and they look like they’re about to jump off the wall. If someone didn’t expect to see a dinosaur or a lion around the corner, they would be in for the scare of their life. Pierrot often takes before and after pictures of the places he transforms and it’s amazing to see the transition from a simple wall to a work of art.
Pierrot started his own company where he paints his artwork for people. On his website, Pierrot writes: “Passionate about drawing, I founded my decoration company GrafoDeco. Addressing both individuals and professionals (public or private companies), event organizers, associations, or all those who are anxious to bring a touch of originality to their interior or exterior decorations. I paint all supports (walls, panels, canvases …) and of all sizes.”
Pierrot didn’t study in any art schools or anything similar. He started like most street artists—on the streets. He learned everything he knows on his own or from other artists. In a previous interview, Pierrot mentioned that he was inspired by a school friend to start creating art.
Pierrot doesn’t just do street art, he creates interactive optical illusions and they are very difficult to do. The level at which you have to understand perspective, light, and many other things is insane and requires a lot of experience. This shows perfectly that street art is not always just vandalism, it’s also an amazing and very technical art form.
Pierrot tops off his amazing graffiti by coming up with fun ways to photograph it. He makes his art interactive so that people can take fun and unique photos with all kinds of creatures, characters, and even animals that don’t exist anymore. Pierrot himself dresses and poses with his work, which often is one of the reasons his work goes viral.
We got an interview from Pierrot and asked what the goal of his street art is: “My primary goal is to make people laugh. For people to have fun and escape by looking at my paintings. I have been drawing since I was little, my cousin drew a lot, and I started vandal graffiti in 2001 with a school friend.”
“The hardest part is not repeating myself over time. I always try to create something new. Sometimes animals come back in my paintings, but I’m usually trying to find something that best suits the wall. I need to paint without always doing the same; it’s quite difficult over time.”
We asked Pierrot what topics he chooses for his graffiti: “I don’t have a particular subject or theme in mind. I don’t convey a specific message through my art. I just try to keep it childish and fun.”
“My style is mostly 3D and quite cartoon-like. It depends on the moment. However, the main goal is to make people smile. So that the people who discover my paintings will have a moment of lightness in a world where everything goes so fast and crazy. I watch a lot of cartoons. My goal is also to get away from the problems of everyday life and dream.”
Pierrot tells us how he chooses what to draw: “It also depends on the moment. I watch a movie or a cartoon and an idea comes to me. I also come up with ideas by looking at the wall I’m about to work on. The idea comes to me because the general shape of the wall is different (angles or wall superposition). I try to change the main subject of my art often. I don’t want to get stuck doing the same thing over and over again.”
“I started doing 3D designs 5 or 6 years ago, but I’ve been painting for 20 years. I still hope to paint even being old with a long white beard, young people will call me ‘the old fool of the village.'”
Pierrot shares what inspires him to keep on creating: “My friends and traveling motivate me to always be more detailed and complicated. I challenge myself constantly. I am never very happy with the final result of my paintings, so I always try to do better every time, when possible.”
We asked the artist if people ever get upset at his graffiti: “No, people mostly like it, or just don’t care. I live in a village in the northeast of France. People do not look too much at graffiti and are not always fond of art.”
Here is some advice from the artist for people who want to create art: “Always practice, don’t watch social networks and media, especially at the beginning. Paint, paint, and paint again. Especially for fun, not for the money or to be known. It’s a passion before it becomes a profession.”
Pierrot tells us more about himself: “I paint almost every day. I live very simply. My pleasure above all is to paint, find abandoned places and later find ideas for paintings for them. I do a lot of sports, like breakdance. However, I do less and less because I am getting older, it starts hurting everywhere over time.”
Pierrot has a message for our readers: “Keep your youthful soul alive, don’t be too serious and rigid in life. Remember when you were 10 years old and the world seemed like magic. This is my life philosophy and above all, be curious about everything.”
Fascinated by music, movies and sitcoms, I’m passionate about social media and can’t live without the internet, especially for all the cute dog and cat pictures out there. I wish the day had about 40 hours to be able to do everything I want.
As lockdowns loosen, people start venturing out into the streets. We can once again appreciate fresh air, open spaces, and hopefully, some good graffiti on a wall rather than bad ones. I know for sure that there’s at least one person that tips the balance of good-and-bad graffiti to the better side. He goes by the street name of scaf, or scaf_oner, on Instagram. What’s more, he isn’t a mere vandal: “I love to paint in all of these abandoned places. Above all, I like abandoned houses, manors, castles and factories.” By doing so, he transforms them and adds extra value to them, rather than the opposite.
The French street artist’s trademark is his extremely detailed and realistic style. He portrays all sorts of animals like dinosaurs and snakes, skulls and bones, robots, and other cool stuff. By the time scaf is done, his work looks picture-perfect, as if he glued a print of a photo. Everything is there: details, shadows, highlights, gloss, and flair.
It makes one wonder where he acquired sick skills like that. One would assume that he went to art school, or something similar. It turns out his background is “the school of street,” as he jokingly said in his exclusive interview for Bored Panda. “I did not study art. I started 18 years ago in abandoned factories and the street. It was a school friend who transmitted this passion to me,” he told us.
But wait, there’s more depth to it than that. Literally. His other signature skill is his ability to draw from a perspective to create an in-depth optical illusion where the object seemingly pops out of the wall. I, for one, would die of a heart attack if I saw a dinosaur of his in an abandoned building. His 3D drawings are so lifelike, it makes one forget that dinosaurs went extinct millions of years ago.
The artist even kicks it up an extra notch by striking often-hilarious poses that complement and play along with his drawings, making it real Instalicious eye-candy. It enhances the whole experience even more: it’s one thing to take a picture of your work, and another to have fun while doing it. He even dresses up accordingly for them.
Apart from his insane skills, this too must be the reason why his 120k followers on Instagram aren’t just an optical illusion. If you like them, check out his other works on his social media pages above. And if you go for a walk along the streets, make sure you appreciate all of the good works of art that are out there for everyone to see for free.
The artist has also opened up about what his quarantine experience was like: “Quarantine hasn’t changed my daily life much when I’m in my little town in france. Apart from the many staggered trips, I continued to paint alone in my abandoned factories. And if not I worked some painting on canvas, and I drew a lot. I am in my artistic bubble every day.”
Fascinated by music, movies and sitcoms, I’m passionate about social media and can’t live without the internet, especially for all the cute dog and cat pictures out there. I wish the day had about 40 hours to be able to do everything I want.
Kai, just turned four years old on Saturday, September 21, 2019.
This is the nature of life. One minute we are here and the second minute
we are gone. What remains’ is what we
did with the minutes before, while we are still alive on earth.
This artist prefers to play, rather than work hard on his
painting.
On Tuesday, September 24, 2019,
while we were taking our artwork down at night time, a homeless man asked me,
“Do you sell the paintings?”. “No, I said, we put our artwork up for
people to see, and it makes the sidewalk more pleasant to walk by.”
Then he pointed to my Gandhi artwork and asked “Who is this man?” I
explained to him that “His name is Gandhi. He helped his country of India
to gain independence from the 200-hundred-year rule by the British
Empire. He achieved this by non-violent mean. Dr. Martin Luther
King, Jr., who fought for human rights in this country, USA, followed Gandhi’s
non-violent philosophy. I felt very glad that the homeless man asked me
the questions.
I do not think that homeless
people or working-class people will have a much of an opportunity to visit art
galleries or museums. This is one of the reasons that I love Street Art.
The artwork is in public view. Some might like the artwork or some might
not, but it can create inter action and activate the viewers to think.
This thinking process helps create learning and reasoning about what others
show or tell you to believe.
Left: Impossible
Dreamer – John Watts’ Artwork
Middle: Gandhi Man of Peace and His Words – Ing-On
Vibulbhan-Watts’ Artwork
Right: Beneath the Lake
– John Watts’ Artwork
There are some people asking us about our
artwork that we display in front of our building. So, we decided to post a sign to let people
know who did the artwork along with my Peace Poem.
Little one on mother’s bosoms
Happy to hang along
Where ever she goes
Ride, ride, ride
Happy mother and happy
child
I am a lucky one
Ride, ride, ride
Mommy, Daddy I love you
Ing-On Vibulbhan-Watts, Sunday, November 10, 2019
I wish some of the homeless children that I saw in the parks or
the public library will have comfort and be as well provided for as this child.
This past summer I took our grandson, Kai to
Newark Museum, I found out that it is free admissions for Newark residents, for
others it cost $15.00 for an adult and $7.00 for a child. I took Kai to
Military park to play. I met a woman who has seven children and is not a
Newark resident, so she can only bring the children to the park and cannot
afford to pay for the Museum entrance tickets. I think the working-class,
poor, and homeless children, need as much as education as they can possibly
have. Museums and libraries are good places for children to learn.
They can form good habits of learning and be able to do well in school and have
ambition to get higher education, such as college or university.
Education can help people get out of poverty. The cities nearby Newark, such as
Irvington, Jersey City, and others cities have poor and working-class
children. These youngsters will be left out of the experience and
enjoyment of seeing the fantastic artwork collections that Newark Museum offers
to Newark residents, and well to do families out of town that can afford the
price of admission.
Ing-On Vibulbhan-Watts, Thursday, November 14,
2019
For more information please visit the following link:
David Zinn has been creating
original artwork in and around Ann Arbor, Michigan since 1987. For more than
twenty years, he freelanced for a wide variety of commercial clients while
simultaneously sneaking “pointless” art into the world at large. His professional
commissions included theatrical posters, business logos, educational cartoons,
landfill murals, environmental superheroes, corporate allegories and
hand-painted dump trucks, and his less practical creations involved bar
coasters, restaurant placemats, cake icing, and snow. Now, thanks to the
temptations of a box of sidewalk chalk on an unusually sunny day, Mr. Zinn is
known all over the world for the art he creates under his feet.
David’s temporary street drawings
are composed entirely of chalk, charcoal and found objects, and are always
improvised on location through a process known as “pareidolic anamorphosis” or
“anamorphic pareidolia.” Most of his creatures appear on sidewalks in Michigan,
but many have surfaced as far away as subway platforms in Manhattan,
village squares in Sweden and street corners in Taiwan. He has achieved global
notoriety through sharing on the pages of Facebook, Instagram, Huffington Post, Graffiti Art Magazine, Bored Panda,
Central China Television, Street Art Utopia, and Archie McPhee’s Endless Geyser
of Awesome. His most frequent characters are Sluggo (a bright green monster
with stalk eyes and irreverent habits) and Philomena (a phlegmatic flying pig),
but the diversity of Mr. Zinn’s menagerie seems to be limited only by the size
of the sidewalk and the spirit of the day
For more information please visit
the following link:
The new book has arrived!
“Underfoot Menagerie” is the best way to keep David Zinn’s temporary
street art creatures from running away in the rain: put them on your coffee
table! More than 100 pages of cheerful creatures to brighten your day, plus
explanations and inspirations from the artist himself. Click on the
“shop” link or the image above to order!
David Zinn is an Ann Arbor artist
known for his temporary street art composed entirely of chalk, charcoal and
found objects that is entirely improvised on location. Most of these drawings
(most notably “Sluggo”) have appeared on sidewalks in Ann Arbor and
elsewhere in Michigan, but some have surfaced as far away as subway platforms
in Manhattan and construction debris in the Sonoran Desert. Zinn’s chalk work began
in 2001 as an excuse to linger outdoors and pursue his inner-child, but has
since achieved global notoriety. Give his temporary chalk-based creatures a
safe haven away from rain, by taking his art home with you: https://igg.me/at/davidzinn. David Zinn MUSIC VIDEO: https://youtu.be/ta5cXcCGWsk
Video Production: https://www.facebook.com/VideoVision360
Teachers emotionally support our
kids — but who’s supporting our teachers? In this eye-opening talk, educator Sydney
Jensen explores how teachers are at risk of “secondary trauma” — the
idea that they absorb the emotional weight of their students’ experiences —
and shows how schools can get creative in supporting everyone’s mental health
and wellness.
This talk was presented at an
official TED conference, and was featured by our editors on the home page.
To get young kids to thrive in
school, we need to do more than teach them how to read and write — we need to
teach them how to manage their emotions, says educator Olympia Della Flora. In
this practical talk, she shares creative tactics she used to help struggling,
sometimes disruptive students — things like stopping for brain breaks, singing
songs and even doing yoga poses — all with her existing budget and resources.
“Small changes make huge differences, and it’s possible to start right now
… You simply need smarter ways to think about using what you have, where you
have it,” she says.
This talk was presented at an
official TED conference, and was featured by our editors on the home page.
How can disadvantaged students
succeed in school? For sociologist Anindya Kundu, grit and stick-to-itiveness
aren’t enough; students also need to develop their agency, or their capacity to
overcome obstacles and navigate the system. He shares hopeful stories of
students who have defied expectations in the face of personal, social and
institutional challenges.
This talk was presented at an
official TED conference, and was featured by our editors on the home page.
The TED Residency is an incubator
for breakthrough ideas. It’s free and open to all via a semiannual competitive
application. Residents spend four months at TED headquarters in New York City
collaborating on projects and ideas, which they then share in a TED Talk.
Early last year I collaborated with
a friend who is a professional circus performer and hula hooper to create the
unique images that you see in this article.
There are lots of good light
painting photos around, but the factor that sets these ones apart is that my
friend Tess used something called a FutureHoop – a
transparent hula hoop that has built-in lights that can be programmed to flash
in different colors and patterns. It helps that Tess is a trained dancer and
hooper, so she was able to create some beautiful patterns with the FutureHoop.
You can try this technique yourself
– if not with a FutureHoop then with any number of colored light tubes or
similar devices that are available (or make your own). Do a search on Amazon to see what you can find, and use your imagination to
reveal their potential.
Whatever you end up using for your painting with light experiments, there are a number of things you need to consider to get
the best results. Take care of these and you should be able to create some
strong images.
Choose
a Location
Pick a good location. You need a
dramatic background that complements the painting with light technique you
choose to use. For these photos we went to Massey Memorial, built in
remembrance of a past New Zealand Prime Minister on a hill in Wellington. I
knew it would be a great place to take the photos because the marble pillars
form a dramatic background. There was also plenty of room for Tess to move and
dance with the FutureHoop.
Take the practicalities into
consideration when choosing a background. For example, beaches often make good
locations for painting with light photos, but you need to make sure your model
can walk around safely in the near dark without tripping over rocks (or falling
into the sea). Incidentally, isolated beaches are also a great place to try steel wool spinning, another form of painting with light.
Pick
a model
Pick the right model. Tess is a
professional performer and I couldn’t have created these photos without her.
She had the appropriate costume, including an illuminated bra that can also be
programmed to give different color displays.
Her training also meant that she
could strike professional poses. The following photo demonstrates this
perfectly. Look at the arch of her back, the way her feet are positioned, and
how the toes on her left foot are pointed. You can even see the flashing bra.
The other thing that helped is that
Tess thought about the patterns she would use on FutureHoop, and how she
would move the hoop before the shoot. That helped us nail the shoot the first
time.
Ask your model to practice, and be
prepared to reshoot if necessary. It is possible that you won’t create your
best images during the first attempt. During the shoot, look at the photos
on the camera’s LCD screen and see what works and what doesn’t. Then you can
suggest things that your model can try, or ask her to do something again if you
didn’t quite time the photo correctly. Use feedback to refine the images and
work towards something beautiful.
Time
of Day
Choose the right time of day. The best time for painting with light is twilight, as it is dark enough for the lights to show, but there is
still enough ambient light to subtly illuminate the background, and
maintain some color in the sky.
The only difficulty with twilight is
that the light fades rapidly, so you have to keep up by changing the exposure
settings as you go along. The photos you take earlier on in the shoot, will be
different from the ones you take later, as the light is fading. The ratio
between the light from the FutureHoop (or whatever devices you are using),
which stays constant, and the ambient light, which is fading, changes.
The two photos above show the
difference. The first was taken early in the evening, the second one when it
was nearly dark. The pillars in the background in the first are lit by the
light of the setting sun. The FutureHoop seems much brighter in the second
because the ambient light levels are lower. Note that I darkened the background
of the first image in Lightroom
to match that of the second one.
This photo shows Tess warming up at
the start of the shoot. It was still too bright as this stage for the painting
with light photos – you can barely see the light of the FutureHoop.
If you shoot at night the exposure
should remain constant, but the sky will lack color. On the other hand, the
light from the device your model is using could light up the background
beautifully if it is close enough. So there may be advantages to working at
night, rather than twilight, but in most cases the light during twilight will
be better.
Technique
and Camera Settings
Get your technique right. You need
slow shutter speeds to take this type of photo, so a good tripod to support the
camera and a cable release are necessities. I used shutter speeds between two
and four seconds for these photos – you may need longer
exposures depending on how long it takes your model to move the device you
are using through the air. Tess moved quite fast, so the shorter shutter speeds we used worked better.
Set your camera to Manual mode
so that the exposure remains constant throughout the series (the moving lights
will confuse your camera’s light meter in an automatic exposure mode). It is easy enough to open
the aperture, or raise the ISO, if you need to as the light fades.
Use the Raw format
to give you maximum leeway in post-processing. Shooting Raw simplifies the
shoot greatly as you don’t have to worry about settings such as color profile
until you sit down to process the photos.
In this shoot, once the camera was
set up, I kept the aperture at f/8 or f/11 and raised the ISO as the light
faded. I set the White Balance to Daylight so I could see the natural colors of
the FutureHoop and the ambient light. Using auto White Balance may result in
some strange color casts as the camera tries to compensate for the colored
lights.
Above all, have fun. If you both
enjoy the process you create better images. If your model enjoys it she will
want to collaborate with you on future ideas. Below are a few more images from
our shoot – enjoy and hopefully they give you some ideas.
Any questions? Let us know in the
comments and I’ll do my best to answer.
Ing and John’s Street
Art, Downtown Newark, New Jersey, USA Part 1
I love street art for many reasons.
First of all, the artwork is there for the public. It is for everyone who
passes to their destination. Without spending time visiting art galleries
or museums, they can see art while they are going to work or getting lunch.
Some may pay attention to the artwork and some may not. Some may ask
questions about the artwork. I hope, at least the artwork will activate
the thought process of those passing by.
I love plants and flowers. It
makes me happy when I see the freshness of green leaves and beautiful flowers
blooming. Our shop is closed temporally, and the window gate is
down. I thought that if I display our artwork and some of the plants from our
backyard garden in front of the shop gate, it would make it more pleasant for
the people who pass by. I am happy to do it, and I hope the artwork and
the plants will help the downtown office workers or others feel fresh and
lively.
My first day of Street art was on
Friday, July 26, 2019. I took some plants from our backyard garden to
display in front of our shop. I started my first display of artwork with
“Elephants at the Water Lily Pond” I produced in 1999. There are always
people walking by our place, but more during lunch time. Most of them are
the office workers. Also, in the evening, people walk by going home from
work. Some people are interested in the artwork, and ask questions, while
others are oblivious to the artwork that I display.
One week later I changed my artwork
to, “By the Water Lily Pond”, which produced in 1998. I added more plants
to my display, when the pink blossom flowers of Rose Queen were in full bloom.
This artwork of mine titled, “I Have
A Dream – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr”, I displayed from, Wednesday, August 14,
2019, to August 21, 2019. I produced this work in 2010. I also
added more plants to fill the front of shop space.
My Thai classical artwork was displayed on Thursday, August
22, 2019. I produced this artwork in1994.
On Monday, August 28, 2019 John
added his work to the display. John’s artwork is on the far left,
“Impossible Dreamer”. “Gandhi Man of Peace”, in the middle is my artwork,
which I produced in 2000. The far right is John’s artwork “Beneath the
Lake”. Thanks to John Watts, my husband, for helping to display the
artwork in a better presentation.
Ing-On Vibulbhan-Watts and John
Watts, Thursday, October 10, 2019
Based on an update to
his website this morning it appears Banksy visited
the Jungle Refugee Camp in Calais, France, one of the largest refugee camps in
western Europe. The artist left behind four new artworks, most notably a piece
featuring Steve Jobs carrying an early Macintosh computer and a sack over his
shoulder noting his background as a “son of a migrant from Syria,” (Jobs was
adopted, but his biological father was from Syria). In another piece he
references Géricault’s famous Raft of Medusa painting, depicting an imperiled group
of people on a sinking raft as they hail a modern cruise ship just on the horizon.
The artist previously brought attention to the refuge crisis in a piece at Dismaland earlier this year.
In addition to the artworks, part of
Banksy’s team installed 12 permanent structures and a makeshift playground
inside the squalid Jungle camp using materials left behind from Dismaland, a
project he refers to as Dismal Aid.
One of the best ways you can help
Syrian refugees is through donations to the UN Refugee Agency.
French artist Julien
Malland, aka Seth Globepainter (previously),
has spent the summer exhibiting a large body of work inside and outside of the Institut Culturel Bernard Magrez. Located in Bordeaux, France, the historic chateau was
built in the 18th century and now doubles as a cultural center.
Malland’s takeover includes dozens
of paintings, installations, and sculptures that have transformed the castle
into a colorful record of his travels and a look into his mind.
Titled 1,2,3, Soleil, the exhibition features over 50 of the artist’s faceless
characters. Each room in the chateau has a theme that represents one of
Malland’s previous projects in countries around the world. Vibrant colors and
geometrical shapes are complicated by themes of conflict and loneliness.
The exhibition includes site-specific installations as well as collaborative
pieces made with artists Mono Gonzalez and Pascal Vilcollet.
The walk through Malland’s world
will remain on view in France through October 7, 2019. In addition to his solo
show, Malland also recently completed two murals in Denmark as part of Kirk Gallery‘s annual
Out in the Open mural initiative. To keep up with the artist’s latest projects,
follow him on Instagram.
Seth | ‘Jack
in the Box’ | Østerbro 41 | Aalborg | Denmark
For more artwork and information
please visit the following link:
Hidreley
