I was rather happy with this drunken gangster duck until I posted it on here side by side with a high quality original I can see so much room for improvement. But is still awesome getting to paint on a production with one of my early influences Emit, I use to print pics off Art Crimes to study that shit and he had a couple of pieces on those pages. It was a dope Sunday spray with East, Emit, Shoe and Koze’s first production since getting out, with characters by your’s truly Bgn. So while planning that wall East posted some screenshot he’d collected of characters and they were some of Dermot’s I recognized them as being from the same dude I find inspiration from and I’ve actually painted some of them before.
Years ago Koze and I painted a smokeshop with some getting stoned themed shit. This was my first time being paid to paint graffiti. The owner through some very loose ideas on what type of content would be fitting, dabs, wax, shatter, bongs, marijuana was the direction this was headed. So I got the sketch pad and hit the internet looking for references, I hit behance for some ideas, searching marijuana, characters, illustrations, cartoons and come back across Dermot’s work.
Behance is a great place to browse professional grade portfolios illustrations, hand lettering, photography with classy nudes. But being attached to Adobe, I’ve forgotten what login I used originally cause of the ways I acquire their software. So I’ve lost tons of references I’d found through my browsing, following and favoriting dope accounts. Other sites that I’ve spend hours upon hours of browsing and getting lost finding fresh shit are Pinterest, Dribbble and even Deviant Art has quality cartoon mixed in with their shit show.
Fast forward to earlier this year when all the new boxcars with high numbers started showing up. I wasn’t use to all the extra room on the panels, the placement of my 3 letters was awkwardly leaving to much dead space, so characters were thrown in the mix to compensate. Old Dirty Dermot’s work fit right in.
So it’s only right to give homie his flowers, his talent speaks for itself and I’m sure he influences more then just myself with his dope hip-hop animals. Drinking 40’s, flipping the bird, smoking blunts and up to mischief.
The gallery below is instances where I’ve use Dermot’s work in my productions included is a pictures of the other panel if I rocked a freight. So the gator was skating I grew up on a BMX maybe thats why chose to have him splashing out of water. That splash was referenced off my Pinterest browsing, I have a folder for background ideas as well as cartoons for freights amongst others.
Next up is the camper that a houseless tweaking couple lives out of. I could of rocked my name the homies Jakl, Hyzer and Dlux where bombing some trailer off the freeway when they were approached with an offer to paint the camper. Jakl hit us up at like 4 in the morning inviting Dulce and I to come down and paint this camper with him. It took us awhile to get there and Jakl was almost done with the saloon letters of their last names combined we helped with that background and shit then I painted the other side with is this thuggish cat smoking. I felt they’d rather peep that when entering their camper instead of my 3 letters.
Old Dirty Dermot
Then you got when Otre and I combined our leftovers to come up with the color scheme with exploding background to go with Dermot’s crow carrying a lit 8 ball bomb. I sprayed green behind the crow to match the style he’d done the character in.
For my birthday we snuck into Coors and 3 Lineages were painted, good looking to Otre, Akae, Hyze, Dlux and Dulce for coming out to party with me. This time I tried my best at a mouse flipping the bird, to me the hand looks funny.
Rocking a Cryo with Soja my 3 letters always leaves room for a character this it was a pigeon, cause I’m shitting on fools. Then I rocked the same bear twice. On the Lineage lease by E.&J. Gallo I change his bottle of beer to bottle of E&J. The other Lineage I was lucky to finish the face cause it was painted on a live line that an engine attached to and the brakes bled right after so I was certain it was gonna get pulled on us. So we started to spray double time, I kinda liked the rushed painting just getting it done.
As you can see Dermot Reddan is one of my favorite illustrators out there, I like seeing his style grow while simplifying. Some of his old work was more busy and just as dope in it’s way, I’m digging the bold lines and minimal color palette used, when the background color cuts into the body to define a shape. Thanks for the inspiration.
I’ve talked with a few homies about things I want to blog about, one was giving up game, letting it be known how shit gets done. this falls in that category. This post has given me ideas for repeating themes you’ll see around here; Giving Flowers, Inspiration, Artist Spotlight, Giving Up Game, Random Rabbling…
Almost forgot this bud double cupped that I painted in March of 2017.
