lionfish ...

the end result of plenty work ...

but yah know, I think I like it and its kind of japanese stylings

iron like a lion from zion!

working live (and in person!) ...

for the last 2 days i've been working live and in person at the caribbean canvas company store in camana bay, grand cayman ... http://www.facebook.com/CaribbeanCanvasCompany ...

met some lovely people and worked on this lionfish.

and the staff at CCC (sadi, glenn, jess, hugh, samantha) looked after us and fed us free red stripe and tvlp hung with me patiently.

y'all cyant tell how much i've done from there but let me tell you that dude was mostly white when i started ...

fun wid fish!

the muses ...

it's good to have muses ...
this new show at Artccentrix Gallery was inspired by a little muse who loves horses; she's cute and mischievious, sometimes stubborn and difficult and lovely and beautiful and t'ing and t'ing. i like her and she is mine.
I have a little man muse as well ... different and equally lovely
and ... and ... and a big girl muse, woman ... i am hers.
plenty love!

dready on the tv

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyOvmewimk8 - this is a link to a youtube video of the dready car city - suzuki swift ad ... babes can I drive! Is very cool ... take the time and watch it nuh!

Peace and Love!

dready polo players entering the field ...

this is the second dready polo image ... note the rider nearest you is carrying her mallet in her left hand ...

since 1962 polo must be played right handed but here she is entering with the stick in her left hand, it seemed correct artistically ... and she is just entering not yet playing, so, ya know, I gonna leave it so.

sweeet!

a new series

i don't play polo (although i have played polo) but my cousins, their fathers before them and my uncles before them all play ... I grew up around the game on weekends in the country.

so, when I wanted to do a series of dreadys based around horses a few polo ones seemed to be the right shot ...

going for goal, seen!

dready re-evolution ...

it's all still dready art but there's this whole new sideline of more evolved characters, done for specific jobs, that still adhere to the principle of the simplicity and whimsy of dreadyness.

i think that even in this you can see all the trademarks of any dready despite the fact that character has 'legs'!

chillaxin!

kite surfer ...

this is going to be very big dready ... 10 foot x 4 foot!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGPiXQ2PP8M&feature=youtu.be this, nice people, is a dready tv spot for a cayman car company, Car City ... it's the second ad in a series of three and the first foray of dready into simple animation. simple, cool and comical.

supa star!

surfing series

i been working on 2 groups of art, a surfing and a skiing series; this is #3 in the surfing series. i love to watch surfing and love the idea of surfing ...

as i think I said before if i'd not grown up as a farm bwoy and a cowboy i'd a like to have been a surfer; but shaney don't surf ... dready can though!

surfing's a beautiful art and the sea and sun, tanned skin, board shorts and bikinis, beautiful locations and the smell of coconut oil ...

having done the surfing rasta (which now belongs to Billy Wilmot, jamaican surfer) and the cold water surfer for Caribbean Canvas Company ... i wanted to do a surfer girl; so here she is!

surfin sisterin!

and then ...

and then this came today ... a screen shot of someone's uk iphone with dready art as the screen saver ...

coolness!!

back in the business ...

the very first dready t-shirts came out for Crop Over 2006, august, in Barbados as a promotional t'ing ... a get behind the big truck thing with people wearing the shirt and dancing and t'ing!

that was followed with shirts for sale in Barbados, Grenada, Cayman and soooooooon after, Jamaica all in 2007.

we launched with only our balls and our chat, ya know, cause we had no big money we just kinda went for it to see where it would take us ...

and ...

and see us, we still here!

a few little ups and downs have gotten in the way; the global financial crisis had already been proceeded by earlier declines as people ran out of money in the 2 years before, because or rising costs of food and gas.

but dready be nimble and simply concentrated on original art, prints and PR ... dready evolved and flourished all at the same time blew the original concept out of the water so far and fast that it made my head spin

the original art and the notoriety of his dreadyness flourished ... a whole new vision of dready as art, as a signature style and not just a character bloomed.

but Tshirt sales wilted ... we hadn't sold a tourist related Tshirt in about 2 years till this, this now and here and dready for caribbean canvas company.

caribbean canvas company is a cool idea, driven by the mind of a guy named hugh treadwell; it's a big vision, a quality lifestyle clothing company with the ability to be a regional and then global brand.

we still here bigger and badder than before ...

big up!

what's new ...

2012, newness, positivity ...

this piece is of the National Gallery of Cayman, for the National Gallery of Cayman ... neat trick that don't it!

the stark simplicity of some dreadyness, bold blocks of colour and a little humorous play with the actual architectural drawings.

like!

bits and pieces

these are the new dready bits and pieces that make up the embark show running at the Ritz, Grand Cayman through February ...

embark, ya know, leave, set out on a journey; so they were all about journeys in a sense, 'cept maybe the one on the top left which is entitled 'im bark!

life's full of journeys ...

seeeen!

dready in new group show ...

group shows are easy on the system because the need to perform on opening night is spread across, in this case, 14 people ...

this show's called 'Embark' ... the beginning of a journey.

the two previous posts are art for this show as is the push cart image in the poster to the left ... journeys begun.

love!

dready's little cayman flight

i first went to little cayman 17 years ago ... there's a certain blessed tranquility to the place a removed sense of yesteryear that calms you; the lack of the noise of progress and the haste of modernity.

Peace and love!

dready smart car!

i like this dready ... dunno what else to say

zeeen!

active lifestyle

i don't fish and i seldom paddle board but looking out the window the other morning, the water was shimmering and clear and three men were standing in the water, one the guide and two fishing - it's a common sight in south sound, bone fishermen walking thigh to hip deep, backpacks on, their 'technical shirts' caps and dark glasses ... casting.

when you walk out in the evenings the bone fish are in close to shore churling up the water, hunting in little packs for food amongst the turtle grass.

when the wind's up the sound fills with kite boarders and when its flat paddle boarders stroke the oar ... is beautiful.

bless up!

new stuff

the idea is to create some 'generic' images that can work on cards and other products; images that have their dreadyness intact but might be accessible to wider use.

i pulled this tree for instance, out of an original image for a Bacardi corporation Christmas card and left it to stand on its own.

walk good!

back to the drawing board ...

there are all sorts of new things going on with dready and yet am drawn back to some of the original images ...

time I think find a new, slightly revamped template for the old designs, new shirt styles, lighter, v necked ... hmmm!

and go at it again.

old is new!

working in TV

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhZu1BZ2u4s is the youtube link to Dready's first TV ad ... an ad for Car City service department.

cool for me!

another life ...

another life ... another dready ...

coolness!

an heirloom?

i just finished a commission to commemorate 100 years of the life of a lady ...

it was a big thing deal for me to hear people discuss dready in terms of a family heirloom that would go down through generations ...

big up selecta!

many rivers to cross!

i first went to britain when i was barely 9 ... little tanned island bwoy being fitted for uniforms to go to boarding school in the hills of malvern.

taken away, so to speak, into captivity!

after I left boarding school it took me almost 20 years to go back; i'm glad i did because i like it there and the farther the distance i look back from the better the memories of those days.

i'm on the way back to britain on business and so the cab seemed appropriate.

required of us a song!

Dready, version 5!

i like the back and forth with clients ... the subtle changes that lead to version 5.

communication!

everybody wants to be jus' a likkle bit Bob!

there are 3 kinds of dready art that I can think of:

there's the art of dready characters themselves and their situations.

there's the graphic art which is more about colour and mood, like 'wine glass and plate on green 368'.

And there's dready art that's progressed past stick figures to something still whimsically cartoon like ...

And there's a theme of red yellow and green, african-caribbean colours, that runs through the edges of all the art

I think that the dready marlins series might just epitomize all three kind of art!

everybody wants to be jus' a likkle bit Bob!

zeeeeen!

do you know where you going to!

there's a big dready world out there ...

nuff said!

things a go on!

in the places i come from we'd say "t'ings a g'wan!" ... i've been lucky, let me just say that off the bat; maybe i've worked hard on that luck, but still ...

i think i might have been born lucky, you know, although sometimes, in those darker days, i've referred to myself as the luckiest unlucky man on the planet!

anyhow, back to the luck, seen; i've just done a co-branding logo for the cayman islands for the UK's Jazz FM a digital broadcast across the UK and live online ... it's one of those you've come a long way, in a short time baby, moments ...

dready got soul!

Friends in hotels!

Cotton Tree is a small 4 cottage boutique hotel in Cayman ...

i like them, i've done plenty of images for them.

i'll do more.

cool!

life calling!

in the past 2 years i've done a few architectural elevation dreadys ... this is one am working on now as part of a larger piece of work that'll include the family to whom the house belongs.

i like doing these ... dunno why, deep down inside i may have wanted to be an architect, although i don't ever remember that calling coming to mind!

i wanted to be a farmer once; i grew up on farms and so i guess in a sense i was one ... but i like what i've become. i like this dready - ness that i do.

be yourself!

i love what i do, i love the eclecticism of what people ask me to draw images for ...

today a baby shower, yesterday an ad for a car company, tomorrow a birthday present ...

i've always been a restless yute and so,

eclecticism suits me.

peace.

new ideas!

this's the evolution of an idea ...

sweeeet!

Dready in the paper

Shane Aquart

By now we’re all familiar with dready art, but in the CTA’s Elevations art show, on until the end of February, we see a new dreadyness emerging. Except for a singular appearance in a very cool green and perfectly realised VW Combi Bus, the show is bereft of the usual stick figure dready. The colours, the tone, the style, the whimsy are all there but the characters that appear are all filled out as are the elements of life, the cars, the boats, the buildings; all slightly comic versions of their reality. That said you’d spot them all as dready art the minute you laid eyes on them

“The show was called Elevations, so I included ‘architectural’ elevations and what I wanted to describe as ‘elevations’ in the dready style; the filled out characters were part of that elevated style,” Shane explains.

The filled out characters are inspired it turns out by dready designs for the new Active Capital/Dart Enterprises business Caribbean Canvas Company; a Caribbean active lifestyle clothing company set to launch in February of this year. CCC is the brainchild of Hugh Treadwell who invited Shane to do a series of dready for CCC designs.

“Hugh wanted a dready of Caribbean Canvas Company’s own, something ‘more’ really and the end result was six active lifestyle designs with more evolved dready characters. The Bone Fishing dready in the Elevations show for instance and the Divers with Grouper are both part of that series. The Girl on Jet Ski is also an off shoot of that.” Shane advises. “I loved doing these and I love the end result; a kind of new dreadyness.”

As to architectural elevations; there are ‘elevations’ of the yacht Octopus and of the aforementioned VW combi-Bus but there is one truly unique panorama of famous buildings of the Cayman landscape; starting with the West Bay Fish Fry and ending with the Mission House in Bodden town; it’s like a West to East two-dimensional slice of Caymania.

“You have to see the dusk sky in the Octopus piece.” Shane adds. “It’s purple, but it’s the Cayman panorama that I really like and I’m planning, at least in my head, versions that go further East.”

He continues: “I just wanted to add, because it’s an important step in all this, that this is the first time that dready prints have been done on island, the art for the show and the subsequent prints sold were all done at Picture This, from printing through matting, stretching and framing.”

A new series?

i started to work on a series of surfing images and as i was doing the third one i thought that some alpine skiing dreadys would be just the shot as well.

this is my first attempt ... verbier ride.

geronimo!

leaving on a prop plane!

i went to live in new mexico in the 1980's and work for a guy name eugenio perez; the distances were so vast that we often flew in his cessna ... I often flew his cessna, when it was airborne ... I wouldn't have wanted to fly it before, cause jah know the runway was very short, downhill and ended abruptly in a barbed wire fence!

anyhow, this was about drawing a cessna 'wonnit' ... and i had an idea to show 3 views of the plane and that the views would run off the page. i dig the end result, the perspective, the touches of colour ...

sweet!

new things!

seems appropriate to work on new ideas ... the whole vision for the top of this work in progress seemed to be new and different ... los angeles on the left and big bear on the right; the life of the client's below, part of the life anyhow ...

new t'ings, same like the old t'ings ... only different!

living!

well, it is christmas after all! Happy Holidays.

moooo!

the road is long and there are chickens!

on the long and winding road through life some people cycle ...

i was asked to do a 'mascot' for a team Garmin-Cervelo cycling camp in Cayman ... which is pretty cool cause they're the biggest cycling team in the world.

the mascot was just the dready cyclist and in a version a little different from my vision (you can see the mascot about 5 posts down on the blog) but to the left is a dready original that's kinda closer to my version ... and in a sweet twist of fate this ended up, as a piece of art, in the hands of thor hushovd the world s number one cyclist ... the road is indeed long!

life!

showing off!

so many ways to own dready: T shirts, post cards, baseball caps, bags ... art on canvas, art on paper, art on aluminum even ...

These 6 pieces are part of a group art show; the two in the middle and the one at top right are part of a series destined to be part of the dready for caribbean canvas company line of Tshirts.

changing the flag!

you know just by changing the flag you change the whole context of the piece of art ...

simplicity.

dready!

time flies

this is the dready image that's on the back of the bus in the post below ... it's a year exactly since i drew this for andrew and now he and it are on the way to cross the Antarctic ...

this is the address of the expedition's blog.

live!

http://www.transantarcticexpedition.com/

index.php/expedition/blog

back of the bus!

you could always find me at the back of the bus when i was a yute, yu know ... not bad really, not even truly rebellious just, perhaps, a little troublesome, mischievous maybe

dready art's on its own path, divergent and different through life: the characters are doing their own thing in their own unique way ...

Here, 'Andrew and Andrew', two penguin characters, are on the back of a bus that is literally, i joke you not, going to the South Pole and beyond, with the Moon-Regan Trans-Antarctic expedition.

Look up the expedition because it's a very cool thing they're doing; adventure yes, but science, awareness ... exposition as well as expedition.

zi-ence!

evolution ...

the road was long and the way was winding but the view was spectacular and the destination great ...

these dready art divers don't seem all that much different from the version 2 below that went before, but it is ... very much so; just the change to sand on the bottom has brightened it, more fish has given it more life and grouper adds the whimsical touch ...

that grouper has a big rahted mouth!

Love!

collaboration ...

i think that art works well in collaboration with others ...

there were at least 6 people mulling around the creation of this dready not including the artist himself ...

and here I am loving the end result and loving all the people that participated in the fun and frolic ... frolic's not a very west indian/caribbean word eh; but you know I gamboled through the halls of schools in england and canada where people do the odd bit of frolic-ing.

i've done this image for a ride in the cayman islands with team garmin-cervelo, where local riders get to time trial with the international riders.

i've said it before and i'll say it again doing dready is the most fun i can have with my clothes on ...

peace and love!

less as more!

the whole idea of less as more ...

the essence of the thing, rather than the thing ...

and then you throw a chicken into the eye-line, like you're writing a scene for 'The Hangover' ... just to amuse the brain. think that's what dready art's all about.

life!

deep blue sea sea sea!

i first learned to dive, or at least first dove, with bella, in negril; we stayed at home sweet home ... which was sweet and not very much like home ...

now i live and sometimes i dive, in the cayman islands. its a beautiful place; a first world nation in a caribbean setting ...

this dready is part of a series of six, based around water sports, for a group of caribbean wide resort clothing shops ... there are some little elements of cool in it that I like; the single fish, the bottom of the boat, the fishing like with the red yellow and green bait on the end ...

Hmmm!

the printed mounted and framed image on the wall ... the finished product, signed and delivered; taken, as it were, to the culmination of the art.

it's a nice feeling.

art needs that, any art; the right frame, the right mat ... the right wall.

in the case of the dready i like to leave a little space between the image and the mat when they're done on paper: I like that space, i think it brings the eye in to the art ... on canvas i like the visual of a shadow box frame with space around the art ... but you know, maybe that's just the artist in me talking ...

easy!

in your eyes ...

i don't have to tell the whole story cause your mind's going to tell the rest of it ...

i've just got to give you the essence of the people, their shape, the way they stand, an approximation of their hair and you'll fill in the rest ...

there's a lot about this image that i like; the colours for one, the caricature, the chicken, the text with its subtle humor, the fact their heads are floating, the tennis ('cause i like tennis) ... i like racquet sports; i play squash and badminton and table tennis which, oddly is also a racquet sport (i think!) ...

smile!

by any other name!

in jamaica everybody have a different name; horace's name is really stephenson, bull's name was richard, skinny is skinny, but slim is not and neither of them really name skinny nor slim!

anyhow so i met a girl name chineyphat, but that's not her name and i never really even met her either; we just talk, electronically, you know, as is the way of this new world where we live and work and eat ... and this is the end result ...

i'd wondered how i was going to depict bamboo ave/walk: i know it well, have friends live right there and used to travel that road to kingston in the happy hilltop days of enfield and darliston: but dready 's about the impression of a thing, not the thing and so i didn't depict bamboo ave i just put up a sign and a shadow, because that's the cool of bamboo ave, the mottled, light, the shadow, the sense of a tunnel ...

ride with a friend!

rum bearer!

it's the colours in this dready that i really like; i kind of let the mind run wild through the pastures of its imagination ...

the beginning of a day, the deep soft warm; the photo doesn't do them justice; the sky is gold, the sea cerulean, the clouds bauxite lined with yellow, the rays of sunlight in cream.

The dready girl on the right is lovely, her shape, her expression, the rum on the tray ... it's for the bacardi family and the final cards were printed by roli garcia at http://www.originalimpressions.com/ ... he done good work; if you need him, call him.

cheers!

bone fishin'

sometimes, just sometimes, inspiration seems to click and i think that this was one of those times ... the colours, my work on the characters, the composition, the fish in the foreground ...

i not a big fisherman, i been fishing, been fishing a lot, but is really not my thing ... i like catching, now that's fun: ricky and me trolling the edges of falmouth harbour pulling in one small barra after another and releasing them ... the dock at morgans harbour and sprats on a hand-line ... i like that; trolling hours out at big sea looking for seaweed and flotsam in the hot sun, not so much!

happiness!

new dready ness!

you can see an evolution in the dready ness in this image, while still seeing the original context and intent.

A new client wanted to differentiate themselves from the pack while still using dready images and this was the direction we went in, moving from the surfer image inspired by mel macdonald's cornwall surfing images.

i went paddle boarding at cayman kai the other day in the bio-luminescent lagoon; now that's something to write in a blog about!

never stand still!

bookmarks ...

I think that this was one of the coolest dready things I ever did ... I love these bookmarks, love their simplicity and their absolute cool.

Nuff Said!