I Wish You a Jazzy and Colorful New Year

It is already time to wrap up 2015. What an incredible year this has been for me, with the launch of this website and many other great things happening in my life. 2015 was also the year where I managed to follow my New Year's resolution: to draw every day. Unlike other New Year's resolutions I didn't give up after a few of weeks and kept drawing almost every single day. The artwork above, a sound pic called "A jazzy new year", is the latest on in a series of hundreds of black and white illustrations I did this year.

For quite some time already I had wanted to seriously get back at drawing, and it seems that 2015 was the right time to do so. I have been immensely inspired by a New Year message by one my favorite writers, Neil Gaiman, who wrote: "May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art - write draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself". The kind of message that truly resonates with me. And yes, I have surprised myself with some of my new pictures. Hard work pays off because I have clearly felt improvement in my drawing technique. 

Although this year comes to an end I won't stop here, and keep going on this good path in 2016, aiming at improving every single day. To make things even more challenging my New Year's resolution is to be more colorful! I will add more colors in my work and try to be a more colorful person in my everyday life as well. A colorful person, and in particular a colorful husband, as I am getting married in 2016. The coming year will definitely not be gray. I have found a studio for my artistic activities, and at the very beginning of 2016 already there will be an exhibition of my iPad drawings on forex in Lausanne. Another exhibition is planned for spring, presenting for the first time my large scale china ink artworks. And there will probably be more cover art illustrations, and definitely many many more colors.

I take this opportunity to thank you all for your support in 2015. You have encouraged me and given me precious feedback on my paintings and drawings, online and offline. Every kind word, every comment, every "like" on facebook or instagram, every moment you have spent engaging with my artwork (in my home, on my website or at my studio) are truly appreciated. Thank you!

"A jazzy new year" is for you.

Have a wonderful 2016 filled with a multitude of sounds and colors!

Introducing Oh ! the Beat Nomad

At the beginning of the year, I decided to take on an Instagram challenge and do « A drawing a day » as part of my new year’s resolutions. Not an easy task and like most new year’s resolution I couldn’t manage to do it for the whole year. Yet, after 4 months, I had posted more than 100 drawings and doodles (you can watch them on my Instagram account). I am proud of this as I had never produced so much day after day, or maybe yes, when I was a child. There is nothing like daily training to improve your skills and even though I don’t post a daily drawing anymore, I do practice daily.

Among other subjects, I drew a couple of Alien characters which got some positive feedbacks from the IG community. Even though I am not a social media die hard fan/user I do like me some Instagram where I post drawings as well as some pics of my vinyl records. What I like most about this particular social media is that you can follow and be followed not only by friends but by people from all over the world who share the same interests (a bit like twitter but using pictures instead of short texts I cannot write as you can see judging by my blog entries:) And this is thanks to Instagram that I have been approached by a beatmaker called OlogistBBB, BBB standing for the Better Beat Bureau collective out of Norfolk, Virginia. He saw some of my drawings and liked them very much, especialy the alien characters such as the one below.

I had heard of Ologist and the Better Beat Bureau who are Virginia underground hip hop best kept secrets. He had released a tribute album to Gil-Scott Heron composed of samples of the late poet. Those not familiar with hip hop might think : « well, they do not come from the main rap cities like NYC, LA or Atlanta ». Think again, Virginia is a major state when it comes to hip hop and R&B. The State is home to R&B icons such as Pharell Williams, Missy Elliott, Timbaland, D’Angelo as well as hip hop producers like Nottz or Bink! who appeared on albums by Jay Z, Busta Rhymes, Kanye West or even the last and excellent Dr Dre album (Bink ! did the soulful « it’s all on me » beat). Ologist is actually close to Nottz and Bink! and has been active on the scene for years, releasing good old hip hop beats, reminiscent of the mid 90’s so called « golden age » without being pale imitations.

So, Ologist contacted me on Instagram and asked me if I could draw a new alien character for him, one which would be kind of his alter ego, a bit like Madlib did with the Quasimoto character drawn by Stones Throw Art Director Jeff Jank. So I drew an alien character dressed like a B-boy and a real hip hop producer digging for records and using a MPC, one of the cult sampler/sequencer used by the best producers.

Ologist found the name « Oh ! The beat nomad » and soon after released a first track using the character, a nice little remix of « Rememory » by Chance the rapper, Donnie Trumpet & the social experiment ft Erykah Badu you can listen here :

The track was mentioned on a couple of major music blogs like 2dopeboyz and it felt really good to see our little alien in there. Then, Oh! the beat nomad struck again with a remix of « ...gointohell » by R&B’s newest star Miguel, a couple of days after the release of his album. The remix was also posted in some high profile blogs, and Miguel himself retweeted the remix on his account to give it a good exposure (he has more than 800k followers).

And this is only the beginning of « Oh ! the beat nomad » adventures as Ologist is working on his new EP called « Numb3rs » and I have the pleasure of doing the cover artwork. More info about exciting future collaborations very soon... To be continued

The owl man or No more Mr chouette guy

My good friend Hervé, who organized a first exhibition of my iPhone and iPad drawings back in 2011, was in charge of a collective exhibition in 2014. He asked me to be part of it and said the only requirement was to draw something related to the theme "chouette".

Important for my non French speaking readers: "chouette" has two meanings. In French, it stands for a certain kind of owl, and it is also a synonym of "nice". As I am not a specialist of animal illustrations I immediately liked the challenge.

I decided to draw a half man half owl character, therefore the "No more Mr chouette guy" title of the artwork (and this blogpost). It is a reference to the "No more Mr nice guy" debut album of one of my favorite hip hop groups Gang Starr.

Contrary to most of my drawings, I did study pictures of owls and based the drawing on an actual photography in order to increase the realism of the animal. In the end,  "No more Mr chouette guy" ended up next to a multitude of great owl artworks by other visual artists. This collective exhibition really was a nice... I mean, a "Chouette expo".

Gregoart doing Graffiti : don’t believe everything you see

Like I mentioned it in my previous post, I have been drawing using an iPhone or iPad for a couple of years now. Lately, I have been doing more analog drawing, using a good old piece of paper or canvas and brushes, pens and china ink. From time to time, I still like to use my iPhone to try new things. With the Adobe ideas application, you can import an existing picture to use as a background. This gave me the idea to do a graffiti on the wall of a New York City building, without even needing to do it for real and taking the risk of getting caught by the NYC police. Actually, I used one of my own picture of a Lower East Side building I shot last December. I could have used a picture found on Google but at least I can say I sampled my own pictures and didn't steal the picture taken by someone else. I then drew on the facade of the building and the result is quite realistic as you can see.  

I could have posted it like a real graffiti without mentioning I did it on a iPhone in the comfort of my home, as the resulting picture is quite similar to a picture of an actual graffiti. If you happen to see the real building you will see there is only the tiny blue character graffiti on the facade. Actually, you can also use Google Street to verify if the graffiti is for real or not, as this digital tool is a way to find out of a digital illustration tool has been used to create a fake street art piece. Anyway, it should remind you not to believe everything you see on the web. 

Looking back at this picture, I realize that what is the most astonishing when it comes to graffiti lays more in the process of creating the initial artwork in a blackbook and spraying a large scale piece of wall to realize it. Then, last but not least, you can admire the incredible results on site. And for those who couldn't make it, there is the chance to watch a picture of the real street art, hoping this is a real piece of street art and not a fake one like mine. By the way, salute to all the graffiti artists doing it for real in New York City and all over the world.

Digital sketching by an analog guy

In these days and age of digital, I must admit I sometimes feel a bit lost. As a close to 40 guy, digital was not part of my childhood and I realize a 6 years old child knows more about digital than I do (but doesn't have a clue about tapes and atari video games). I don’t try to escape this digital world and I am even quite active on social media as this is a good opportunity to share, to communicate, and to be inspired. Yet I still listen to analog music on vinyl, and I have ben doing so way before this so called vinyl revival. I also draw without computer and never learned to use Photoshop, Illustrator and all this stuff. On the other hand, I like gadgets and was among the first guys to own the 1st iPhone around me, importing it from the States six month before its release in Switzerland. And, in 2009, I discovered the Brushes app, a drawing software designed for iPhone, really easy to use, and since I always liked to draw small, the screen size of the smartphone didn’t boher me at all. The only issue with these digital drawings was that you couldn’t print the drawings as the resolution was not good enough. But besides that I had a lot of fun with this.

This was later thanks to a drawing software on iPad that I started to get back even more to drawing. Unlike Photoshop or Illustrator, the Adobe Ideas iPad app is really intuitive and easy to use vector drawing software, and I like to use my fingers to draw on the screen, without a pen and digital drawing board, like I was a child doing finger painting. As manual as it may seem, the digital drawings had to be printed in order to be real. I had  even the pleasure of seeing my printed artworks exhibited twice and it was really interesting to get feedback about these illustrations. Not only about the drawings themselves, but also about the fact that it was not handdrawn. The criticism reminded me of the one against electronic music : « this is not art. Everyone can do it without training. » Infact, people who knew I used an iPhone and iPad to draw didn’t know how much I am able to draw manually. This is one of the reasons I did some live iPad drawing and let others use the application sot hey can see for themselves how easy or difficult it could be.

I must admit that the simple fact that you can delete things easily, can come back to a previous stage of your drawing is really confortable and I wish I could do that with a « real » drawing or painting. Yet, I like to doodle digitally and make quick and dirty sketches like the above illustration called « Feeling blue » I did in something like one minute. It was printed and is for sale as a 10 piece limited edition forex piece. As it was done on an iPad, there is no real original drawing, the print is the only physical support of the drawing. In fact, in order to own a real iPad drawing, you should buy my iPad, which is not for sale ! But feel free to purchase one of the iPad drawings printed on Forex, contact me for availability .

Tribute to the Hieroglyphics

As you maybe saw on my website gallery, I love music (I am a vinyl collector not to say junkie and I dj) and love to do music related illustrations. This has been a theme for a long time and this year I started to draw a couple of pieces integrating the logo of one of my favourite hip hop crews : the Hieroglyphics from Oakland.

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Before the Pharcyde, Jurassic Five or the Stones Throw artists, the underrated Hieroglyphics crew has been ruling the west coast underground hip hop scene since the early 90's, with members such as Del the Funky Homosapian and Souls of Mischief. Even if you don’t know Del, you already heard him as the main rapper in Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett’s Gorillaz project which gave him a big mainstream exposure even if a lot of people don't have a clue who was actually rapping. He released a couple of great albums and was also the main rapper in the first science fiction hip hop project : Deltron 3030. He is also Ice Cube cousin but never went the G-Funk route, releasing instead tracks full of clever rhymes, one of a kind flow and voice over complex yet funky beats. He is also a comic books nerd and learnt Japanese just to kill time.

Souls of Mischief didn’t enjoy as much mainstream success as Del but they have been releasing quality albums since their first one back in 1993 (« 93 til infinity »). Contrary to most of 90's artists they even released some of their best releases inthe 2000’s, one with superproducer Prince Paul, « Montezuma’s Revenge » in 2009, with a beautiful cover artwork by artist Steven Lopez (an artwork you can see painted live in this impressive timelapse video). Their last album to date was released in 2014 with production by multi-instrumentalist Adrian Younge (« There is only now »)

Not only did the Hieroglyphics crew continuously release great music, they also have an incredible logo, who was actually created by Del himself and which I incorporated in the 2 above illustrations. They even have their own celebration day, the annual Hiero Day whose latest edition was held on September 7th in their hometown of Oakland (no, this is not yet a national holiday but maybe one day :) 

Gemini mood

One of the recurrent themes in my artwork is duality. I like to draw characters who can be considered as « two face » (more like the Batman vilain than the two face joke in Seinfeld if you know what I mean), with an obscure part of the face hidden deep in the shadows. I didn’t realize this before working on the archives of my artworks. Below are some examples of these two face characters you can find right here on my website gallery. There are some more I posted on Instagram and there are much more to come.

I am not really into astrology but nonetheless I must inform you that I am a Gemini. Maybe this is a reason why I keep on driving characters with a double personnality like mine. I hope that you can dig it even if you are not a gemini. Speaking of gemini, the title of this post is inspired by the Weldon Irvine track "Gemini Mood" off his masterpiece "In Harmony" (Strata East 1974).

Welcome to my blog

Thank you for visiting my website and this blog. It has been a long time since I ran a blog (last time was the stone age of blogging back in 96 !) and I am realy excited to get back into it. You will find posts about my drawings of course, providing some insights on the making of specific artworks and my creative process in general. You will find revelant news about Gregoart (forthcoming events, exhibitions). I will also write about my personnal hall of fame, the artists who inspired me, not only in the field of visual art but also musicians whose tracks and albums constitute the soundtrack to my life.