when zombies walked and liverpool burned

normally these paintings feature a couple of my artistic endeavours that i have blogged about during the month, but this month i have posted about virtually every event on the painting.

this means two things – one: that i have been very focussed on my artworks. and two: i currently have no social life

august was the culmination of about 3 months work getting my educational life back on track [the final project of which was the alice portraits.]  inorder to achieve this i’ve slowly cut myself of from people and the distractions that they bring. but now that im done, i find it’s rather difficult to return into those circles. tis indeed a curious situation to tackle!

the most socialable thing i did last month was to participate in a zombie walk – my own little gang of undead buddies are featured in the painting. i got oodles of fab photos on the day too, the best of which i’d posted already here. a few days later, riots took place and liverpool burned.  the official line is that the events were unrelated.  pffft!

in these paintings, there have been a number of continuing threads concerning people and events [which are more than simply the graphic tools i use to track certain things]. and after a 5 month stretch [since i started the paintings], one of these has came to an end. deadmau5 is no longer. there hasn’t been a single dead mouse in the house. i havent even seen a living one either. i can only assume they’re avoiding the place after hearing rumours about the cryptozoological project i have planned  ;]

im happy to report that i picked up a new skill this month – and it was a direct result of these paintings! i learned ‘sign language numbers’. i always track the dates of the month on the sides of the paintings, and was looking for new ways to record it. a fellow blogger [murphysrun] suggested ‘sign language’. ”fab idea,” i thought. but using all my powers of google-fu i was unable to find a drawn record of numbers 1-31, so i had to learn it and then figure out how to paint it myself. 1 through 5 were the easiest!

this month im using morse code [which i just know will be handy during the many apocalypse scenarios that i will be faced with in the coming years]. date tracking  suggestions for future months anyone..?

chris z

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a cat from cheshire

i have just completed a university project, the title of which was ‘illusion through the lens’.  i was tasked with creating a series of images using camera trickery alone… after some experimenting and development i settled on producing a series of portraits of characters from carroll’s ‘alice’s adventure in wonderland’.

i ended up creating three photographs, using a different approach with each shoot in order to bring a new dimension to the subject matter. this is the first…

light graffiti felt like such a perfect medium for a cat who is barely there..  there’s a real empathy when you consider the transcience of the subject matter and it’s construction.

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drawing in the dark

light graffiti is something that caught my eye a few years ago. after seeing the work of michael bosanko, i couldnt help but borrow an SLR and have an experiment…

“quarter to four in the mourning” [ oct 2010]

as an artist, this was all about mood/ body language/ composition. and i felt it was quite successful in that respect – as it does go some way to capturing the peculiar atmosphere that i feel pervades that ominous moment of the night.

however, i never had the first clue how to use the camera.  so it was more blind luck than judgement which allowed this image to turn out as well as it did! but now im embarking on another photography project that has required me to pick up the most basic camera skills and its incredibly exciting to feel the enthusism of playing with a new medium once again. hopefully i’ll have some interesting snaps to post in the coming weeks

chris z

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