Live paint jam with the Angry Pencils team at West Raven Community Gardens

April 11, 2024

I am now a part of the team with Angry Pencils. An artist collective doing live art jams that we host in and around Peterborough. On Friday the 5th April i did my 3rd live paint jam (2nd time with the Angry Pencil team) at a community garden with 13 other local artists. We had no theme this time per say, only that we must create something that is pg. as it was a family event.

We could choose board sizes from

4ft by 4ft

4ft by 8ft

or 8ft by 8ft

I chose the middle ground. A safe 4ft by 8ft. Which I still find a wee bit intimidating but i thought lets go for it.

We are also allowed to use spray cans, pasting, Posca pens, acrylic paint, stencils or any medium for 2d. I chose cans, chalk (just for marking), posca and acrylic paint.

Here are some drawings and prep I did leading up to the event.

Dogface. Shapes and lines. Black lines on white background. Done on a friends ipad. I wish I could afford one.

Dogface. White lines on black background. I like better.

Many of the artists had expressed prior to the event that they were going to paint animals so i did look a few options. Building animals faces with simple shapes.

Maxi Jazz. Faithless frontman. He said some cool words back in the day rest his beautiful soul. Nowadays im thinking almost constantly about the wars that are happening in this world i wondered if i could take a more political view point at this event? but with musical lyricist influences ...

"ALL SUBTLE FLAVORES OF MY LIFE I BECOME BITTER SEEDS AND POISONED LEAVES WITHOUT YOU

YOU REPRESENT WHATS TRUE

I DRAIN THE COLOUR FROM THE SKY AND TURN BLUE WITHOUT YOU

THESE ARMS LIKE A PURPOSE

FLAPPING LIKE A HUMMING BIRD IM NERVOUS COZ

I AM THE LEFT EYE YOUR THE RIGHT

WOULD IT NOT BE MADNESS TO FIGHT

WE COME ONE."

Maxi Jazz. Faithless.

I loved his words

I decided against the Maxi tribute for the live jam but I will consider it for something else in the future.

The morning of ....

We started set up at around 9am getting all fences up and securing all the boards onto the fences safely. The boards are around 8mm thick and are drilled at the tops and bottoms where strong cable ties can fit through and tie onto the metal fence bars. The night before. the weather had been non stop rain and so the terrain was a little water logged so we had to do some shuffling about and place down tarp for the artists to stand on while working.

The weather that day was not too bad and the sun came out so all good there. From around 10:30 we could start painting. I am normally the last one in the group to finish so I made a start asap. Unfortunately i did not get too many build up pics as i was just trying to get it done.

So the painting had got to this point before i had thought to take any progress pictures ooopsie. But here i have used spray cans for the black and purple and sky background. I was pleasantly surprised how the clouds came out as ive never used cans before besides painting 3d things I have created with spray paint. Here are a few shots taken by other artists of me on the day .......

Me on the right and an Artist called Lee Mason on the left.

To my right was Aimi Rix also spray painting, a very cute budda!

Me working on those realism eyes

A view of the gardens shot by Tony Nero. A legendry artist from Peterborough, always loves to get involved and guaranteed to make you smile.

A few hours in and my child wants to get involved ........ Tobys on the decks watch out!

I definitely found it difficult to socialise and talk to people as i was working which is a shame as you can make great connections here in this environment. But people still came to talk nevertheless as they do and that was manageable if they asked the questions and didnt mind me cracking on as we conversed. Everyone here involved and all the public that came where absolutely wonderful and full of good vibes.

Here is the finished piece. I would have loved to have added more to it but i was in panic mode and again took my time. I am sure after a few of these jams i will get used to the flow of things.

Cropped i like. Which is quite often the case. I enjoy certain parts of my paintings and not necessarily the whole thing. I do enjoy putting together human forms in simple shapes then adding that splash of realism in the eyes. Its creepy to me. I enjoy creepy. I like to put these things together. Real and not real. What is real?