Results matching “paint”

Fanakapan has been painting street art in London for quite a while now, and his style has evolved over time from colourful candy creatures to colourful balloons to foil balloons and chrome items. I originally covered the artist's work in my post Street Art: Fanakapan. Past work includes a chrome headphones and mask, a collaboration with Louis Masai with balloon sharks, a chrome frog, foil balloon shapes collaboration with Cranio, more balloons, and balloon elephants. The artist has been recently experimenting with painting glass animals. The new work appears on Pedley Street off of Brick Lane and features, according to the artist's Instagram account, drunken glass elephants. 

The elephants are pictured with green-blue marbles, wine glasses, and bottles. The piece was inspired by a video of elephants in the wild who eat fermented fruit and get drunk off of it.

At the end of October, I visited the Twining's Tea Museum and Shop, which is located on the Strand opposite the Royal Courts of Justice. Thomas Twining started out at the age of 31 in 1706 with one coffee shop, which became well-known and used by the likes of architect Christopher Wren. By 1708, he had two establishments. This location on the Strand was Twining's flagship shop since the early 1700s.

Buildings were known by landmarks or imagery instead of addresses, so Twining had a golden lion painted above the door. It became known as Golden Lyon tea and coffee house in 1717. The shop was actually larger than it is currently because business was booming and the coffee and tea was sold by weight; the other part of the shop is now a pub next door.

Against all odds, his business was profitable in uncertain times of the UK (riots, heavy taxes, wars, etc), and he ran it for 35 years before he passed away.

The front of the shop contains teas that can be purchased. There are loose leaf and bags of tea, and some of the tea is limited edition and comes in collectible tins. More expensive tea can also be purchased here. Some of these can be smelled before making the purchase.

At the back of the shop is the museum and tea tasting bar. The museum held tea-related items and vintage tins, tea pots, pictures/illutrations, and china. Also on display were wooden boxes where the tea could be stored.

The tea bar at the back of the shop offers tea tastings. Visitors can have a taste before purchasing their favourite tea. Four pots of tea had been brewed for visitors, but visitors could also ask for any flavour of tea stored on the shelving on the back walls. When I arrived at the tea bar, one visitor (a tourist) had just asked for a cup of the Queen's 90th Birthday tea, which is a limited edition blend. The Twinings staff worker put the little crown on her head when making this special tea. (She and all of the staff were also dressed up for Halloween.)

Russian Caravan, a green tea Long Jing, and another black tea were brewed and were on offer to visitors. I had a sample of them.

Twinings Tea Museum and Shop are located at 216 The Strand and is open from 9:30am to 7:00pm weekdays and from 10:00am to 5:00 on Saturdays and 11:00 to 6:00 on Sundays.

American street artist Kai Aspire pasted up some street art across London. I found some of his work in Shoreditch, but King's Cross and the South Bank were additional locations where he pasted his work. Kai's artwork contains social themes of imagery, such as consumerism and technology. He creates his work in spray paint and crates plaster sculptures and framed imagery. Most of his work across London was the framed images. The below photographs are the artworks that I found around Shoreditch.

The above image depicts peace with a man holding a flower and standing in front of a tank.

Consumerism is an important theme with one person being bombarded with advertisements and another reaching out from a bar code to pluck a flower.

Technology also features with a person trapped inside a mobile phone. The words "save urself" are printed on the phone.

In the above image, the bag of money holds the person down from being carried away by a heart balloon. Money ties and weighs us down, keeping us from what we love and freedom.

The above image features a business-person running in a hamster wheel. This depicts working hard and never getting ahead and never having enough time.

I love the above image as it is a simple image that features two friends sharing a pile of books.  

Earlier this year, I discovered three new murals from the popular German artist who is attributed to becoming the first street artist for his paintings on the Berlin Wall, Thierry Noir. (I've covered his previous work here.) Both of the new murals are located in Shoreditch. One is a large mural that features the artist's colourful characters with a guitar. Normally, the artist paints just the faces/heads of his characters, so this one is a little bit different in that it shows the full body with another item (a guitar). The mural can be found just off Shoreditch High Street.

The second mural is located at Old Street and depicts a large purple-pink head in the signature and colourful style. 

The third is on Brick Lane and features another one of the portraits in a light blue colour.

Thierry Noir's long-running exhibition at the Howard Griffin Gallery continues until the end of this year. 

This spring, street artists Amara por Dios and Flesh031 painted a mural on Chocco Matte in Soho. The project took eight days to finish and is named 'Urban Jungle'. It is a green mural with winding vines, tree trunks, and ferns. Amara por Dios is a Swedish street artist who has been living in London since 2013; she is inspired by South American Inca patterns and art. (I've covered previous work on the Village Underground and for International Women's Day here.) God's Flesh Flesh031 paint in a more traditional grafitti style.

This mural is in a popular location in Soho and is quite eye-catching.

For a long while, the wall on Clink Street, South Bank (London) contained an old mural that had been tagged over. The mural was by Spanish street artist SPOK and the subject may be best described as a spray can gadget. The mural has been looking tired for awhile; I first took notice of it in 2010, and it was already looking a bit tired then. Earlier this year, I noticed that it had been tagged over extensively. I'm happy to say that the wall near the entrance of the tunnel on Clink Street has had a new lease of life.

The new wall features the work of Australian artist JimmyC (James Cochran). I covered a lot of his work in my originally post here, which features Usain Bolt during the 2012 Olympics. Over the past few years, JimmyC has been busy creating new murals and refreshing them, such as this female portrait near Great Eastern Street, this female portrait near Petticoat Lane, this scenery and portrait on Calendonian Road, this portrait of Mick off Brick Lane, this family portrait on Joe's Kid Cafe, and the portrait of David Bowie that was famous at the beginning of this year after the singer passed on. 

This new mural is not too far from Shakespeare's Globe theatre and features the bard himself. This is appropriate because this year marks 400 years since the end of Shakespeare in 1616, and London hosted 'The Complete Walk' in April to mark the anniversary and showed light projections on the Guildhall. The walk mentioned features several shorts of the bard's work, and one of the screens was located in the spot where the mural is; it was showing "The Twelfth Night."

This is an excellent addition to London's street art scene as it shows a famous London resident, located not far from his theatre which was probably a little closer to where the mural is than the present day reconstruction. Have you been to see it yet?

While I did not go to Newcastle in order to see street art, I did manage to find some without looking. One of these is work by Karl Striker, who has been compared to Banksy. The artist uses a stencil style, and the below piece is located across from the police headquarters. It was commissioned by the owner of the wall, and the piece shows a police officer with the sign reading "warning stereotyical lookalikes operating in this area". The street art is protected with perplex.

Most of the street art that I saw in Newcastle was located in the archways behind Sage concert hall. I believe these are called Comusica arches and contain a lot of street art. I've taken a selection of photographs of these.

I noticed part of a mural by Sheffield-based artist Phlegm inside one of the arches, but it has been painted over. 

The piece originally looked like the below, which I took from Phlegm's official Pinterest page. Too bad that it has been tagged over as it looked like an excellent piece tucked away in this archway.

Tyne and Wear are currently hosting 'Great Snowdogs of the North' charity sculpture trail to raise funds for St. Oswald's Children's Hospice. The snowdog sculptures are inspired by the animated short "The Snowman™ and The Snowdog", which is a popular winter and holiday film featuring a little boy who builds a magical snowman and snowdog. Each sculpture has been painted or crafted by an artist or group of artists. The charity trail runs until 29 November, and the sculptures will be auctioned in the new year.

Snowberry - Simon Tozer

Last weekend, I headed up to Newcastle to have a look around as the city and area is one of the few places in the country that I have not had a chance to visit; I also downloaded the app for the Snowdog trail, and the bloke and I headed off finding the snowdogs. Unfortunately, the snowdogs were scattered all over the county and not in one place where we could walk to them, so we drove to see them and I spent the next day in Newcastle in order to see the ones that I could visit on foot. I managed to see all of them except for one that was located much further north in Northumberland National Park.

Dog on the Tyne - Jane Headford

Snowdog Springtime - Joanna Lumley

Great North Polar Pooch - Sandra Jaekel-Bothyart

Tails of the Sea - Joanne Wishart

Luna - Geoff Chappell

Wonderhound - Illona Clark

Sparky - David Sith

Chilly Dog - Sally Adams

Rosy Posy - Sarah Jane Richards

Patchword Snowdog - Jill Barklem

Es Tu Cosa - Tristan Lathley

Gingerbread Dog - Sarah-Jane Szikora

Pawdington - Mandii Pope

Rover Codex - Ellie Tarratt

Skipper - Joanne Wishart

Snow Angel of the North - Mik Richardson

Snowline - Jim Edwards

Arthur - Jeff Rowland

For more information about Great North Snowdogs and the trail map, visit the official website at http://www.greatnorthsnowdogs.co.uk

Often, the street art scene in London encourages collaborations, such as this piece that appeared in the summer by Binho Ribeiro and Tinho. Both Tinho and Binho Ribeiro (Binho) are street artists from Brazil. Ribeiro has a long legacy of producing street art in Brazil, and this spans from the mid-1980s. The work below was created for the LATA Street Culture Festival. Ribeiro creates brightly-coloured characters and uses patterns.

Tinho also began his street art career in the 1980s, and he painted the background, water and the Big Ben in the mural above.

Ananda Nahu (ANahu) is a street artist from Brazil who creates her work using many small stencils and freehand painting. Most of her work features bright colours and has a human element to it. She recently painted on a wall near Old Street. The mural features a cloaked figure holding a bright red apple. It was painted for LATA Street  Culture Festival. 

Although this was her only work in London, she did paint additional murals in Liverpool and Whiteley Bay during her visit to England.