Moly_X @ MCBA

Playlist of videos shot at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts Moly X show last winter.

BELIEVE/Visual Intervention

BELIEVE/Visual Intervention from Ian Wilson on Vimeo.

A short film collaboration between South African street artists and Rochester, NY crew FUA, Summer 2011

Two more ‘Faces of Flickr’

Wow, I haven’t updated this blog in ages! Well, here’s two more in the ongoing Faces of Flickr series. These represent a slight departure from earlier portraits, in that I’ve reduced the importance of line in favor of a more naturalistic treatment of tone. I also played with color a bit in the reflections in the sunglasses of Nasir.

I’ve also set up a Google+ account and have been posting about art and music and other interesting things I stumble on. Here’s an invitation if you want to come check it out. I think it’s a vast improvement on existing social networks and I’ve been having a lot of fun with it so far (possibly why I’ve neglected the blog for so long...).

Congrats Ryan & Diana!

One of my oldest friends got married over the weekend. I made this portrait as a gift for him and his beautiful bride. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that they’ll like it.

Also, I recently did an interview for Julia Kay’s Portrait Party, a very cool flickr group I’m involved in. Check it out and let me know what you think.

6x6x2011 online gallery

The 6x6x2011 show is coming together! The Rochester Contemporary Art Center has posted this year’s online gallery of over 4400 pieces from all over the globe. This year there are prizes for the top 3 popular vote getters. You can cast a vote every day between now and July 1st. I would love your support for my rollergirl piece.

I have 5 pieces in the show and here are the last two which I was saving until now:



Both of these are available as prints from Society6.

You can see all 5 pieces in this set on my flickrstream.

The Johnny Cash Project

Found this awesome project while looking at Paula K‘s amazing rock and roll sketches.

You can see the pieces I submitted here and here.

Battle Scarred Rollergirl

I decided to do one more little portrait for the 6x6x2011 show. I did four portraits last year and they inspired the whole ‘Faces of Flickr’ series I have been doing ever since. I’ve had this amazing portrait set aside for a long time and finally got around to painting it.

This image is available as a print from Society6.

So, I matched my total of 5 pieces from last year. I had a few other ideas but I’m really happy with the ones I did finish. I’m trying to save the last two until the show opens in June.

6x6x2011 is just around the corner!

Less than 2 weeks until the deadline for the 6x6x2011 show at the Rochester Contemporary Art Center. So far I’ve got 4 pieces ‘in the can’ with one or two more possibilities. I’m going to hold off on posting most of them until the show opens in June but here’s one of a pair of mandalas that will be in my submission.

Check out the other one over on my flickrstream. Also, I just saw this posted on the 6x6 Facebook page:
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6x6 artworks by internationally renowned street artists Faith 47 and dal will be included this year!

Pretty damn cool and they linked to this great mini-documentary on Faith 47.

Faith47 from The Ginkgo Agency on Vimeo.

Zentangle ATCs

I’ve been doing a lot of portraits lately and thought I would switch it up and do a few abstract designs. Poking around the internet led me to this zentangle challenge. It seemed pretty fun and I just started doodling. Then I got out a few pieces of Bristol board cut to ATC (Artist Trading Card) size. Here are the results:

Recreating Szaza's lost moly

There was a pleasant surprise over on my internet friend, Samantha Zaza’s blog the other day. She posted a new entry in a moly_x book for a group we were in together, Group #64 which had flickered out of existence before ever really taking off back in 2009.

Szaza’s own moly for that group had been lost in transit somewhere between Australia and Mexico. It was a real shame because she had made a really beautiful first entry in what was intended to become a “narrative corpse” comic. So, I decided to recreate her book as best as I could. Here's a step by step guide.

#1: I bought a new Japanese accordion-fold moleskine and printed out copies of Z’s original artwork (it took a few tries to get it to the proper scale) on 2 sheets of regular printer paper.


#2: Cropping the paper down to the dimensions of the book I used a 6B pencil to cover the backside of the first few images (I only did a couple images at a time in order to minimize smudging).


#3: Taping the artwork in place I proceeded to trace the image. This transferred the graphite from the back of the page to the book.


#4: Removing the artwork we can see the faint image that has been transferred. I then darkened this up with a 2H pencil.

#5: Here I repeated the procedure for #3 and #4 until the entire image was transferred.


Now to see if I can talk Szaza into restarting this languishing group! I think I’ll do an entry and send it back to her to let her re-paint her entry.

You can check out the original over on Samantha’s flickrstream.

The Sketchbook Project

I managed to finish (or at least fill...) my book for The Sketchbook Project 2011 in time to meet the deadline, but just barely. I signed up for the project rather late but still had a few months to work on it. Unfortunately, I procrastinated pretty badly with it for a while. Only managing a few half-hearted sketches until well into December. Finally, while doing some Christmas shopping I found this fascinating book on the sale rack outside of Borders.


I had my inspiration for the rest of the sketchbook. But even then I didn't carve out the time to work on it. Thankfully the deadline got extended to Jan. 18th. I went into full-on marathon drawing mode over the MLK weekend (I think I did all or most of 14 drawings and all of the lettering in that time!). I had to pull out four blank pages and I doubled the pages (the paper was so thin that I decided to tape every other page together) so I ended up with only 16 spreads versus the 40 that were originally in the book. I cut a couple other corners by including one of my Jon Stewart stickers on one page and a selection of the ‘Faces of Flickr’ series on another.

Needless to say it was a pretty stressful finish. I really wish I could have ended with a drawing of Martin Luther King's powerfully defiant mug shot (which would have been drawn on the holiday dedicated to him) but I had run out the clock by that point.

I am however proud of most of the work I did manage for the book. And I think I surprised myself with the sheer volume of drawings I was able to crank out in that last frenetic weekend.

Check out the whole set at the ArtHouse Co-Op Site and all of my other work at my flickrstream.

Moly X Portraits

It’s been a while since I’ve posted about the Moly X Portrait Group that I participate in, but with the exhibit at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts opening soon I thought it was time to mention it again.

Also, I've done quite a few entries in the past year and I just finished one that I’m particularly proud of. It is in Brazilian artist, Claudio Ramires’s book. Claudio is one of my favorite artists that I’ve discovered through the Moly X project. He did an amazing entry in my book that even included a Pop-up portion. Check out his awesome Youtube video to see it in action. After seeing that I knew I had to try and knock it out of the park once his book came around to me. I was inspired by elements found in his artwork, especially his blimp-whales. Check it out:

Also, check out our group's blog and/or my moly_x flickr set for more images.