Third in the Stereoscopic Collection, my début hand pulled screen print editions in two colour. This version of the anaglyph application renders a different typographical pun into each eye, while most of the letters are in similar positions.
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photography by @officialomar88
Recently I enrolled on a screen printing class at Jacknife prints in Bristol, and these experimental prints are the result. I attended with the sole purpose of getting my hands dirty and to teach myself a technique of stereoscopic, or 3D printing. You may be familiar with it from comics but I have an unhealthy appetite for creating artworks in red and blue. This particular design was already engineered with over 60 layers of depth so it was the prime candidate. I knew the desired optical results from previously using 6 colour digital lithography, I was aware of the requirement for a very pale cyan which has additional colouring properties.
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This was a LONG time in the making, the fully immersive 360° video is in the final stages of production.
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Learn more about (and watch) the video trailer after the jump…
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Examples of some of the characters found in the new font drawn by hand called Harial, built by Chu
Harial – pronounced h(air)-ee-yul
New font drawn by hand called Harial, built by Chu and provided free
t4qs (lower case, all one word)
This was designed for The F*ck You Sound (T4QS). Available to download for your own projects.
CLICK HERE to download http://t4qs.fm/HARIAL
Send us what you make with it, cheers
This year’s Glastonbury saw the final episode of the public tyranny and protest theme in the South East corner, with their own TV station (SHI.TV), newspaper and the obligatory installations and artwork covering the whole area. In response to the brief, one of my contributions to Shangri-La started with an ambition to invent, and build by hand, a publicly accessible, medieval vandalism machine.
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If there was ever an exhibition that deserves another look, then it was old friend’s Sickboy’s last show in his old studio space in Bristol earlier this year.
There are over 50 naughty words hidden in the grid. Prizes for completion
This year Glastonbury’s Shangri-La crew were selling a newspaper which donated all proceeds of the sale towards easing the refugee crisis. I’ve seen them go for £5 on ebay. Inside this newspaper you will find Turdsearch, a word search which I devilishly secreted over 50 bad words in a 20 x 20 grid. Some of these naughty words are tortuously upside-down or backwards, or both.
Some of them are normal reading and really easy to spot.
There were no contenders for the prize during the festival itself, which achingly ended only two weeks ago. If you want to be in with a chance to win some original artwork then you are best advised to print off the Turdsearch and use a pen to find the words, unless you’re a whiz and can draw over the digital version in a visible colour in DPaint IV or something.
When you think you have found them all, send the completed grid with all the words lined out via
My fellow scrutineers and I will analyse the submitted grids for clarification and with due diligence, the winner will be announced as soon as we have one.
Be warned – there is more than one red herring…
Download this image and use a pen, that’s probably the best bet you have to complete Turdsearch and win
Popped out for a quick squirt in Bristol on one of the first sunny days this year, with one of me old muckers and one of the finest artists to grace this earth, Cheo.
The day we painted was also Chris Brown’s birthday, Adele’s and Craig David’s too. Not absolutely sure that this didn’t inspire the character in the piece…
Fired the background with a tin of BurnerChrome gold because it was the biggest amount of anything I had in my dreg bag. I carved into that with transparent black to sculpt the surrounding frame made of cables. The cave is entombed within the equipment itself, like a bubble or capsule of audio and playthings on a desk crammed with devices and machines. And the obligatory toothbrush.
Chu + Cheo = ChuCheo
I am pleased to announce the release of three new digital prints to coincide with the opening of the ASK group show at Hang Fire in Bristol. Each print measures 210mm x 297mm (a4) and lovingly depicts three of the more recent, spherical drawings that I have produced, printed on 250gcm² brilliant flat, white cartridge. The views are created from within a fully 360° panoramic, digital maquette – consisting of only my hand drawn artwork.
The prints are VERY limited to an edition of only 5 for each design, signed, numbered and available from Hang Fire. Follow the links below to see the prints at the Hang Fire online store:
Detailed images and a bonus 360° panorama after the jump.
26 years have passed since my first visit here in 1990 with my boss, Jo from Walsall Youth Arts. This was when the whole area here was looked after by a few artists who worked in the vast, broken empire of Alfie Bird’s Custard powder factory. This was before Benny Gray bought it for one British Pound, as long as he promised to renovate it (or at least that’s how I remember it). Nowadays, his son Lucan looks after it along with the famed Dave Peebles.
Last time I was here was for City of Colours last year.
Global Street Art gathered myself, Gent & Title – all of us from the hallowed motherland of the Midlands. We’ve known each other for yonks. As soon as we heard that we were working together we furiously got together several inspirational imagery and references of local celebrities that (should) inspire the young creative people of today. The ideas came thick and fast and during the research we discovered that a quote from Benjamin Zephaniah would give us the title of the work.
“Birmingham has changed a lot, but for me it’s still the centre of the universe,”
– Benjamin Zephaniah
Plus – I really wanted to bust some freehand lettering.
At one point I thought we were all going to turn up in our DPM as the weather was disturbingly and deceptively freezing up there on the fifth floor. Plenty of paint courtesy of our mate Boffers (our first designated safety operative and lift pilot) from Global Street Art. We got on with dividing it up and loading the lift with our wares to get the top done first. The lettering can wait…
It had to take 4 days, so me and Gent primed and built the top faded radial effect, and most of the cityscape, so by the second day it was ready for Title’s arrival. Then one and two halves of the portraits of Benjamin Zepheniah, Mike Sinner, Felicity Jones and start the top of Lady Leshurr. The process went swimmingly well, allowing the time in the central piece to get worked by Title and Gent and I ensured the surrounding artworks join well to below (to come) and above (previously done and ready for… lettering).
We wanted to paint a tribute to the rock corner of the Midlands with Ozzay, Plantay or Nodday but the brief required inspirational creative characters that 16-24 year olds would recognise.
This particular wall was a lovely, smooth, new build, in the Custard Factory Phase 2 complex, housing 5 floors of small studios, a tobacconist, sweet shop, graffiti supplies a small lake with a fountain. Right beside the wall is the railway taking travellers in and out of Moor Street station, only quarter of a mile down the road. We all shared an amazing moment as we went 20m up above to the same level as the railway in the lift to get the lettering done (did I mention the lettering?). This epiphany was only embittered by the fact that we were down by two tins of beige – and as if by some stroke of godliness, the guys down at GraffitiArtist.com were emptying their van after a visit to the N.E.C.. We bought their whole stock of the beige required to finish the SE of UNIVERSE.
Enough to say that they earned a trip up to the neon-lit fifth floor, with the smell of 94 merging into the smell of diesel and electrical arcing. We all earned icicles too.
Oh, and the huge lettering was painted freehand. Very satisfying to wake at the Old Crown, walk around from Floodgate Street to be welcomed by our aerial, poster-like declaration. Before I boarded the return train I could just see it between the buildings, looking to Digbeth from Moor Street station…
The surface was lovely and glossy, painted once when developed, and once more when it was leased to Dulux. Facing the wall is the walkway from the college round the corner, accessible by crossing the River Rea from Floodgate Street.
The Full Moon, in the centre of Bristol invited me to decorate one of their rooms in the 70-bed backpackers hostel at the bottom of Stokes Croft. I arranged for the floor to be laid again with new wood, linen was bought in and patterned, and a very large extractor fan was installed , as the hostel itself was open. Thankfully the room had no guests staying in it for a few days.
Plus – its only £7.50 per night in this mixed gender dormitory.
The owner of the Full Moon (JJ) said I could ‘go for it’, no surface untouched. This was to be the first, full room equivalent of my cubic experiment (see it here). I knew that I couldn’t count on a square repeat in a spherical environment due to the polar caps. This I learned through my experience of texture mapping on 3D computer models for games, and after experimenting at the Lunar festival last year. I devised a repeat that would be largely based on what I could physically measure with an aerosol can in my hand – I wasn’t using any other apparatus, no measuring tape, no projectors, no masking. And no squares…
This ended up with six segments (like an orange), with each segment having six vertical, stacked sections and each section had no sub-sections nearer the polar cap but 5 sub-sections around the horizon or eye-level. This resulted in 116 triangles of roughly similar sizes. Any more segments, or sections – the whole process of mapping the lines across different depths would be far too time consuming and far more prone to error.
The sketches below might explain this process a little bit better, and the viewpoint photographs and 360 panorama will allow you to see where the furniture is inside the room a bit easier.
The surfaces were only painted if they were visible from the sweet spot (66″ above the ground). If they could not be seen then they would remain unpainted. You can see this in the viewpoint photographs below.
Little did I know that the one-word brief that the Full Moon forgot to mention, was Kaleidoscope…
A very special, big thank you to Omar, Steve and Damo for the effort put in to make this room a reality and of course, the staff at the Full Moon for looking after us.
There’s only one point in the whole space which allows you to see the complete illusion, midway beneath the two light bulb fixtures. I have made a 360 degree panorama so you can put yourself there without visiting yourself.
You can drag the view around by clicking and dragging the left mouse button, the gyroscope allows you to tilt the view around you on a mobile such as iPhone.
View the 360° Panorama FULL SCREEN
Mobile – zoom in & out by pinching, choose whether you want the gyroscope switched on or off by clicking the icon (only necessary for portables)
Computer – zoom with CTRL/SHIFT or mouse-wheel
The second part in my ‘Word Games’ series for Shangri-La at Glastonbury this year employed the wonderful simulated factory-shutters – or lenticular, to give it its loosely technical term. The journey to find the texts was long and pot-marked (just like the south east corner) because I simply couldn’t top Gerry’s lyrics from my previous lenticular work. This word pair needed to reflect the actual brief (protest, politics, people power) as well as the location.
This piece is based on the written word versus the spoken word. The words I chose mean something completely different when (mis)heard. Sects becomes sex, and Tense becomes tents. Sects/Tense (politics) & sex/tents (Glastonbury). Tense is visible when looking from the Heaven stage towards Hell stage – Sects is visible when looking from the Hell stage towards Heaven…
Bez has his own Acid House tent within the Unfairground area, built and ran by some of the Mutoid Waste crew led by Sam Haggerty.
This is a close-up section of my new work entitled “a CandiD mover” which is showing in the Shangri-La field at this year’s Glastonbury Festival. The theme this year (in case you needed telling) is “political upheaval”.
One of the main pieces is a portrait of a current political figure, created from over 1000 stills from UK public protest coverage. Some of the footage is from The Poll Tax riots of 1990, Reclaim the Streets 1998 and at the more recent insurrection and takeover of Conservative Party HQ.
This was developed for the Pridstock3 festival website. This was for the third in a series of Pridstocks, the annual birthday party in Kent celebrating the life of my long-time friend Jon Priddey. The event is proposed to occur at the start of August, the choicest weekend slice of summer.The artwork is entirely produced in a full, 360 degree panoramic canvas.
The DANAD Gallery 360º virtual tour that I built is now online – designed specifically for smart phones and other portable devices.
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In pursuit of the finer distortions of the plane, I was honoured to get to paint something I’ve longed to do for such a long time. The DANAD Gallery in Hertford allowed me to paint on the floor and ceiling of their entrance hall almost entirely. More (distorted) images after the jump.
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Mark Daniels from the DANAD Gallery in Hertford gave me another opportunity to explore large-scale, illusionary artworks.
Glenns wonderful artwork promoting the gig
Great book put together by our friend Joe Epstein. Go grab it…
Joe’s operates the LDNgraffiti website, and his wonderful photographic work can be seen on his website or on his Flickr.
I got a little one of my London contributions too, in the sticker section…
I will be back in the midlands for a massive get together organised by Street Art Birmingham. My contribution will be a large scale piece within the Custard Factory grounds. Well worth a visit to see some action. All the large painting will be finished on Saturday 6th so a lot of work can be seen in production in the days running up to the weekend.
Over the weekend of 6th and 7th of September, Digbeth, Birmingham will be transformed into one of the UK’s largest outdoor art galleries. A celebration of urban art forms, the streets will be turned into a sea of colour…[via]
(C of colour – get it?)
You can read more about the sleeve illustration here, with lots of extra artwork.
To buy the CD album (with a 12 page booklet full of my designs) click here – latest look it was £8.99
Transform your room and let everyone know how you feel about mediocre, mass-marketed interior goods. One of my most popular sticker designs is now available to buy as a floor rug.
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Another painting in one of my old stomping grounds – Sodtherich Triangle (nursery to my ‘Your Mum Rang’ campaign), with next door neighbours Eine, Steve Powers and Probs over the road. A simple daytime freestyle, placing the LPG logo amongst a sunset and overgrowth. I know its not an incredible painting, this is more about the other significances of making the panoramic image.
I tend to create a 360° panorama of everything I do, as they are often quite location specific. People’s experience of this kind of imagery is usually confined to Google’s Street View, but their (automatic) method results in a poor render of the polar regions and bad stitching all round. At least by hand, the full immersion is possible, my digital darkroom allows higher resolutions, crisper detailing, and above all else – interactions.
Click the image below to activate the panorama. There are some minor aberrations but you get the idea. I’ll have some more news about my 360° development soon, I’ve been working on something for a few years…
Mohawk inner sleeve designed by Chu
The great Dre Masso asked me to write some lettering inside his cocktail & dim sum parlour, smack-bang in the middle of Chinatown, central London.
Souled Out Studios did it again and helped me to make another print in my awkward series of London’s underground system (although, curiously some of it’s overground system travels over the underground, my old stomping ground Whitechapel…).
This was another of those you-have-to-be-in-the-right-spot kind of paintings.
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Created a pre-photographic interior shoot for a recently opened bar.
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More than just another logo design.
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Visitor’s to the Glastonbury Unfairground field this year could see my latest illusion right in front of one of the stages.
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This is the third in my series of distorting the plane.
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As if I haven’t got enough on my plate…
Here’s a selection of some of my favourite logo designs. Really enjoy busting out a logo, one that has legs, appropriate for audience, future-friendly and adheres to guidelines. I’ve got some archived artwork and logo design that I will publish over the next few months.
The following 14 logo designs are spread over multiple pages with a short explanation for each, some shown are variations of the original.
Made for a website that I designed too, this logo represents the feel of this war-torn capital. The site includes interviews with people and some amazing photographs from David Gill, several people who work in the city speak candidly of life in Kabul. I had the idea to make the logo appear like a battered road sign. The dirt texture whch helped degrade the type was actually a photograph of a dirty floor at Glastonbury Festival.
The lamented London Pleasure Gardens asked for a hotel design based on shipping containers. This is the result of 2 days of my most intensive coffee drinking ever.
There are big reductions over at my shop, head over there now to avoid disappointment. All originals on canvas are half price. There’s never been a better time to get your hands on a piece. The reductions are permanent, so newer canvases will be half price too – until they are all gone.
Sign-up for the newsletter for discount vouchers and future updates on all things Chu.
Go here to buy this gigantic book from Frank ‘Steam 156’ Malt, photography above by Meek.
This came as a bit of a shock. I couldn’t believe that amongst all of the multicoloured noise that surrounds the Sodtherich triangle, my piece would end up in a crucial scene in a film, using its optical trick of seeing two different images or words.
Warning: The video below contains harsh, audible language from the very start, not suitable for those easily offended. Continue reading »
