This is the third in my series of distorting the plane.
They’re getting bigger and a little more challenging to create. My first experiment with this mathematical eye-candy was the De Buurvrouw in Amsterdam, my second in Bristol at See No Evil.

I cannot remember having the fortune to work this well with any photographer (obviously my mucker Meek is an exception). As soon as we got there, the location of the tripod and camera was paramount, so that was sorted first by Wallkandy. Kindly – Meek had provided the ladders so this automatically enabled the height of these massive walls.

And just in case you were wondering – I realise that my lines aren’t parallel, scientifically perfect or even straight. I’m making these distortions with just my eyes and the paint, so there’s no projectors, no string, no protractors or mirrors. I painted this is the same vicinity of three of my good friends, Xenz (who created a distorted, floating cityscape nearby through the bushes – check the 360 degree panorama below), Meek & Fluid from the midlands painted in the comfort of another annex to this rather over-explored location.

The personal advances I made this time was the inclusion (or ignorance) of the floor detritus and the keen rotation of the whole grid. Covering the detritus with the corresponding chequer tone enforced the illusion, creating a transparent layer grid similar to a layer’s default background in Adobe Photoshop. The whole process took just under six hours, and I already forgot where it’s painted too…

No devices were harmed in the making of this anamorphic projection.

360° panorama

Footnote

To be absolutely honest, I delayed publishing this item until the anniversary of M. C. Escher’s birthday. He would’ve been 115 today.

Also on schudio.co.uk:

1. 3D prototype at Tamworth
2. Bullrush the show
3. Weekend warriors

Fiji Water approached me to create a curious item for an event with the Stolen Supper Club in London recently. The final approach was a concept I had developed for quite a while and this seemed a perfect response to the brief. Each of the guests could also take the plate away with them that they had previously eaten off.

If you haven’t worked it out already – the cracks resemble the road plan of London and the Thames, the principal waterway for that city.

I meticulously referenced several different roadmaps to ensure geographical consistency, extra effort was made to attribute the Thames itself, and that the M25 had the necessary spine links. The roads would thin as they travelled away from my ‘impact point’ towards the mouth of the Thames, mimicking the effect of dropping off the back of a lorry – or (ahem) stolen.

Nobody gets to know the venue or the food before the event happens, so I made an invitation with a brief animation in order to give a small clue. A sequence of a spherical moon cracks before your eyes as if it’s dropped on the floor, into the shards creating the roadmap.

Stolen

Supper Club

Fiji Water

by Chu

Also on schudio.co.uk:

1. Club interior – Debut, London
2. London venue refurb
3. Light Gymnastics at the Swiss Embassy

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.

Also on schudio.co.uk:

1. Kabul at Work
2. Pridstock
3. London venue refurb

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.

I was invited to the site of the lamented LPG, in the shadow of the gigantic Millenium Flour Mill in the docklands of east London. My work with Mutate Britain had sealed a creative pact so I was surveying the land for psychedelic prospect. I began looking at producing another gigantic record-breaker, although the work on site was proving to work against that idea.

This proposal’s main ambition was to counter another proposal that used vintage caravans and Winnebago’s. This is merely to show there was a much cheaper alternative.

I began by recreating the scale of the Mill, next to the riverside land which was to house a total of at least 40 containers in formation, even finding time to render it in stereoscopic 3D too. Working to scale was important, so out came my Sketchup gloves.

Working at this speed, it gave birth to a new digital sketch technique (this has since been further developed to use on RAW360). The concept for the structure was to blend the foliage and plants into the harsh, decayed metal forms of the containers, the merging of these monoliths and the surrounding urban countryside. Apartments on the top floor were given posable parasols, the reception area and the roof also contained some decorative, architectural follies. Lanterns were used throughout to add to the outdoor low fidelity of the concept.

Z-buffer renders are great for looking at, and from extracting data. When I worked in game design a few years back, the z-buffer would inform distances from the viewer in scales of gray, making calculations more reliable. Geologists call them heightmaps. Its simply a ‘radar fog’ that adds three dimensional form to an image without using colours.

Visit the London Pleasure Gardens website here.

Site is down since LPG went into administration.

Also on schudio.co.uk:

1. Dump up the Volume
2. Stuck in the middle with chu (Clowns & Jokers)
3. Cutty Sark vs Chu vs Cordy House (sketches)

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.

Also on schudio.co.uk:

1. Sodtherich tee shirt released
2. Cover your Tracks – new 3D sketch
3. Big Breakfast, Channel 4

Go here to buy this gigantic book from Frank ‘Steam 156′ Malt, photography above by Meek.

Nobody can argue with Frank’s collection of graffiti paintings from around the globe. This HEAVY book is a small glimpse into the interesting vaults of his own collection and beyond, representing the great and the good, the young and the old of the graffiti scene in the UK, and some of my work. They printed the Hole in the Wall piece on a whole page. There’s also a finished photograph from the rooftop of Cordy House RIP, this version used 47 photographs to see everything.

Good work Frank mate.

Also on schudio.co.uk:

1. Mural Art Vol. 2 published
2. Names in Vain graffiti cards
3. Dreweatts Urban Art submission – Her Masters Vice

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.
The movie first came to my attention from a tweet by the director Luis Prieto.

After a little tweet-off it was clear I had to go and watch the film. In the tweets Luis spoke of the direction using the lenticular aspect of the piece, showing the two views.

I really enjoyed the visual madcap style of the movie and its crazy take on a single incident spiralling out of control with some pretty heavy characters. Whenever I go to the pictures to watch a film, I sit through the entire credits to pay respect to the creatives and the entourage that makes the whole thing happen (and I urge you to do the same). I will do this even if it was awful; I’d still like to find out who was responsible for the debacle. There I was sitting snug as a bug in a rug in a vacated cinema, reading the names and service crews at the end… There it was right at the end, knowing I was going to read it!
‘Thanks to Chu’.

Here’s the thing. I painted it over 6 hours in the rain, and I’ve even been asked if I worked with somebody to print it out that big. All the text (Arial) is painted by hand with 6 cans of mtn94 aerosols, planned over the space of around 6 years! I don’t think I’ve seen any other painting that wasn’t commissioned by a movie, that was so in context with the plot and looked like it was meant to be there. I’m left feeling really honoured that Luis chose to remix the original story with the help from one of my street paintings.

Luis actually tells me that they shot several other scenes in Sodtherich, and none of them made the final edit.

Thanks Luis.

Well, it could have been done in many other cities. It could have been a universal story, a very simple universal story, about a drug deal gone badly. It probably could have been done in many other cities, but London felt right because it’s a happening place.

-Luis Prieto, interviewed by Leslie Coffin

Oh, and add me on Twitter if you wish, or Luis or the movie.

Pusher is produced by Rupert Preston from Vertigo Films and Chris Simon and Felix Vossen from Embargo Films.

Also on schudio.co.uk:

1. Stuck in the middle with chu (Clowns & Jokers)
2. Donnie Darko trailer
3. Dreweatts Art Core submission: Fungle Junk canvasses

Here is a piece that I really enjoyed making, just me drawing and layering several time lapse sequences together. Its an extension of the work I did with the 50 metre wide Supersonic Watercolours water feature. This was my graffiti but there would be no single trace of the artwork produced, as part of the process would be erasing it. You can see a similar effect on some of my videos, for the titling. I write the title, then wipe it out from view.

This is the same technique but in thousands of colours, applied to a venue that is making a name for itself, allowing vivid colours to be painted on a large scale to their indoor wall space, the Swiss Embassy in London. This had to be carried out in a public section of the incredible building, so I proposed projecting onto a large wall a short animated sequence that would be shown at an oblique angle so as not to be obscured by the presence of people in the room.

Also on schudio.co.uk:

1. Donnie Darko trailer
2. Big Breakfast, Channel 4
3. Names in Vain graffiti cards

Its not very often that I release my designs on clothing, and not very often a piece goes from my graffiti to stickers to prints to clothing. Sodtherich is the exception however… THTC are the company sharing the vision. Its been printed on 100% carbon neutral cotton and available in sizes from Small to XXL, on grey or white.

There’s a few examples through history, I released a few in the late 90s on Numb clothing & even earlier on Moves clothing. More recently I made a ‘Born in Walsall‘ design that proved a local winner in my hometown.

To the untrained eye the design looks like it says Shoreditch, an area of east London impacted by police cordons, graffiti exhibitions, trustafarians, bagels, second-hand goods and several transport networks. I first used it on a wall on Holywell Lane, high enough to be seen by the newly launched East London line, on the day of the general elections too, a few years ago. The piece was the first I ever had censored, read more here…

Teamed up with Souled Out Studios (see if there’s any left) to make an edition (only £35) a year ago.

Gotta say – its one of the special phrases that I’ve penned, next to ‘Your Mum Rang’. Still turns an eye.

Head over to the great online shop at The Hemp Trading Company:

Also on schudio.co.uk:

1. Sodtherich screenprint
2. Sodtherich
3. Polite Line tape re-released

Concept

Standon Calling is held on the grounds of Standon Lordship near the heart of Hertfordshire, farmland and gardens transform into a festival for over 5000 people.

I made sure that I understood the surfaces intimately before I began working on sketches. There were lots of removals taking place a few weeks before, in the place I was going to paint, so I lent a hand. The theme for this years festival was ‘Journey to the ends of the world’, or to be more precise – Phileas Fogg in an exclusive, outdoor members bar. There were 2 areas for me to paint – the seating area by the ‘cow shed’ and the huge backdrop for the main stage, this required two slightly different design approaches.

The seating area was a good 20 metres of differing wall surface behind seats & the flame retardant calico backdrop measured 10m x 6m high. The vibe for the seating area was to make the visitors feel like they were in an overgrown, giant garden, whilst the backdrop was to be a more literal translation of the Phileas Fogg vibe.

Seating Area

The whole area was primed in a middle green (a so-called dirty mint) as this section had to be painted pretty quickly. It was a massive section where people could seek shelter (weather pending) or to rest between dancing. To recreate a garden feeling, I chose to paint enlarged leaf designs, with a little light breaking through them, interspersed with bumble-bees carrying a sound system towards a glade full of pollen-gifting flowers.

Backdrop

This backdrop was so huge it had to be painted on the floor, in my socks. It took two very late shifts lasting 14 hours each. The colours were painting onto bare fabric, so every stroke would have to be definite, in effect dying the fabric. There was no way I could get the fabric back to white as it was unprimed to assist shelf-life and to prevent any cracking when rolled up. The pressure was certainly on.

The idea was fairly simple – three aeroplanes, three balloons & one boat circumnavigating a globe, surrounded by clouds and the stars. One of the aeroplanes would be so close you could see the pilot (maybe Phileas himself)

The only crucial problem became apparent when the cloth was raised into position, it was not raised as high as initially thought, so the bottom half was invisible to the audience.

The following photographs are distorted from fisheye photographs, so they look very blurred around the edge, apologies for this, but something this large is very hard to photograph flat – you’d need to hover about 5 metres above it to get it done properly. Gives you an idea of the scale of the work though (in the photograph my feet are in scale, whereas my body is exaggerated).

Sketches

A section in 360°

Click the image below to activate the panorama.

Custom shoes

After I sprayed some flames on a volunteers wellies during the setting up (no photos – sorry), everyone was asking me to do theirs too. Three pairs were seen kicking about, 2 in Standon – 1 in Bristol:

Also on schudio.co.uk:

1. Standon Calling 2012
2. Mostly Jazz Funk & Soul Festival
3. One Foot in the Grove