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Shok 1 appreciation thread


Guest NATO

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Got to say Shok 1 has been one of my favourite writers latley hes always producing quality pieces and he's got quantity too.i never seem to see much of his stuff posted anywhere. so i thought i would start this thread. here are a few flicks stolen from various sources that i did manage to find or scan.

 

p.s. sorry if you have seen these all before

 

 

http://www.yourphotos.com/users/4499/shok%201%20character.jpg'>

 

http://www.yourphotos.com/users/4499/shok%201%20space.jpg'>

 

http://www.yourphotos.com/users/4499/shok1%20bdiddy.jpg'>

 

 

http://www.yourphotos.com/users/4499/shok%201%20urban.jpg'>

 

 

 

http://www.yourphotos.com/users/4499/skore-wow-shok-dek.jpg'>

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Found a few more he's an english writer for those that didn't know and i think his crew are called sinstars. These are from c.1995 - 2000 the last one is a canvas.

 

 

 

 

 

http://www.yourphotos.com/users/4499/red.jpg'>

 

http://www.yourphotos.com/users/4499/props.jpg'>

 

http://www.yourphotos.com/users/4499/shok1pistols.jpg'>

 

http://www.yourphotos.com/users/4499/they.jpg'>

 

http://www.yourphotos.com/users/4499/shok1canvas.jpg'>

 

Please post more if you got 'em

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Shok1 is definitely a slept on writer. At least in the states.

 

What I like about him the most is his ability to adapt. His eagerness for progression. And the various styles. He has all the things that make a great writer.

 

I've seen this image from him of a wall that is brick, with a hole busted in it. He saw the damage as the perfect opportunity to paint a face using the opening as the mouth and the jagged bricks as teeth. So clever I almost wet myself.

 

Thanks for posting up NATO!

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Guest Shok1-SINSTARS England

Thanks

 

Thanks for all your kind words.

 

I am currently working on my website shok1.com. Its going to be different in a number of respects so its taking quite a while but I'm expecting it to go live at the beginning of next year.

 

I have 17 years of photos and drawings saved up for it so the problem is trying to organise it all!

 

For now, we have the crew site online- there will be an update soon and a lot of new graff is waiting to be put on there:

 

www.sincru.com

 

I also have some work on www. pictoplasma.com, an interview in Backspin magazine and I'm working on some designs for Tribal for anyone that is interested.

 

 

 

 

SSSSShok1

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ha, i was just going to say that you had been on this site a while back, and there you are.

 

the 'props the hard way' piece was hugely inspirational to me when i was coming up, and definately got adapted as my personal motto.

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Guest Shok1-SINSTARS England

props the hard way

 

thanks :)

 

that piece was about that moment when a writer says to themself, "Why am I doing this? I must be crazy!"

 

To an average member of society I guess it must seem pretty mental to be out in the middle of the night making art for everyone for free or carrying huge bags of paint around the country...

 

shok1

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Guest Shok1-SINSTARS England

:)

 

i'm only really interested in experimenting now. it just doesn't seem worth it to me after all this time to be going out to do something i know i can do.

 

i only really enjoy it if i'm out on a limb and i'm scared it won't work out. thats the high...

 

of course, like you say there will be things that people don't like and things that they do but the main thing i'm trying to break down in my own mind is this idea that you have to have "A STYLE" and then you are committed to it, trapped by it....

 

Obviously you need to have some core persona to what you do to get away with it. i hope that there seems to be some overall sense to what i'm up to, because it used to concern me that people wouldn't understand what i was trying to do.

 

for me, its about the idea. i could never commit to one style because there is no one style that would fit everything that i want to do. so if i really want to do something then i will have to learn or invent a new style to communicate that.

 

i've just been working on Insectoid styles... pretty nasty looking.

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Guest Shok1-SINSTARS England

Invention, Reinvention, Comprehension.

 

I'm sure i'm reinventing the wheel a lot because of my igonorance of the entirity of graffiti over the last 30 years and in the overall context of art. But in some ways I cherish that ignorance because then at least I know that the idea was born from my own mind...

 

and then hopefully at some point I can invent something new and in that small sense I would have moved forward the boundaries of the culture. Its a lofty thing to aspire to, but I believe we all owe it to our forefathers who invented this movement for us in the days of pure innovation.

 

Its hard to know where to go. Who can really say they have an overview of the whole of style? I saw so much stuff in NY that just blew me away. It left me feeling like a baby to this day, naive and innocent to the world of Writing.

 

I think when i came back was when i first realised that i had to desperately try to break away from established format, to break the rules. I had thought that i was some kind of crazy rebel, out there bombing. But how could i be a rebel if i was following a format?

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Re: Invention, Reinvention, Comprehension.

 

Originally posted by Shok1-SINSTARS England

and then hopefully at some point I can invent something new and in that small sense I would have moved forward the boundaries of the culture.

 

Right then .. I was going to ask you about this when we next meet, but as you've touched on the subject here on 12oz, I might as well ask you now. The pieces below I'd consider to be quite similar in their structure and technique. I asked Skore about this as I couldn't believe it was a coincidence and he said that Busk was talking to you about it at Urban Games. To me, it's quite a distinctive style .. especially here in the UK, and the only reference that I could think of was back to when Jason did some characters as part of a TDK production that was never completed in Brighton (see below). Anyway, thats just a character, and the letters weren't done the same way.

 

So is this a style/technique you feel is moving boundaries, or are you still looking further down the line at something else?

 

http://www.graffiti.org/dj/comp.jpg'>

 

http://www.graffiti.org/dj/jason.jpg'>

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Guest Shok1-SINSTARS England

Organic Battle Weapons

 

Hello mate :)

 

Right...

 

Busk got the style from me at Urban Games which is fine by me (as long as he gives me credit ;) )

 

As far as the Dusty Knights joint is concerned-

 

The similarity is in the technique. I have influences from comic book art going back to the late 80's, primarily the english king Simon Bisley although i look at a lot of stuff. The technique is what i call "painting backwards" ie light over dark- the Germans find that very amusing!

 

I was aware of this technique from '89 onwards after seeing Slick employing it to great effect at the Bridlington jam in england, but i didn't use it at the time for several reasons-

 

-i felt it looked too airbrushy

 

- the paint we had in the uk at the time didnt really allow for too much putting light over dark. Although in retrospect i could have done in it a minimalist style with black and white hammerite. But i was still using colour in quite a maximal way then.

 

- i felt that it took the movement out of it- i was trying to "sketch" with the can. although now i have found hybrid methods that i think put extra movement in.

 

Now, as far as TDK is concerned, i guess we have common influences in the case of the comic book art, but it seems that most writers over here are less aware of the comic book stuff. I think that their artwork is heavily derivative from the same line of descent as Bisley (ie- fantasy artists like Frank Fanzetta etc)- i don't have an incredibly indepth knowledge of comic book art but it seems to me that their 2000AD work came in later on after Bisley?

 

In any case, we are talking about technique more so than content. When i started doing the Battle Weapons properly (i can show development going back to maybe '90 or something like that- i couldn't make the medium do what i had in my head back then- its come into its own to a degree since we got highly controllable paint) i was looking more so at Fangoria and the special effects industry for reference. The earlier times i used the technique more in an abstract way- i used to put "Jellies" through my pieces.

 

the piece you posted is more relevant to me conceptually in that it is composed of a mass of video nasty references. in that case, the technique is just to make it "pretty" but the real painting was coming up with all the horror films on the fly (i didnt decide to paint it until i got there so i didnt have any reference. The crowd helped with ideas!).

 

As far as whether its moved boundaries... in the sense of art overall no. But then theres an arguement that all art derives from natural sources and is all derivative. It disappoints me to think that all we really do is move imagery from one context to another though so i tend to dislike this idea.

 

Certainly its caused a certain amount of influence in terms of expanding the thinking about 3D styles which was one of the things i had in my mind- you can see that it has affected seak's stuff a bit- hairy bits etc.

 

My OBW's are going in a certain direction but i won't talk about it now ;) Wait and see...

 

At the end of the day i won't and can't decide whether anything i paint has innovated- i don't have the arrogance or the overview to decide something like that. All i can do is put my ideas out there and then people can all decide what you think.If anything i feel it is worthwhile in that it has caused this dialogue which i feel raises some very important issues i believe the culture has to address.

 

This idea that someone "owns" something the minute it comes into graff is strange to me- the argument in Subway Art with Kid Panama and Seen debating who did the flying eyeball first... neither of them.

 

i think that there needs to be more dialogue surrounding our influences. What have you referenced? Why? Ultimately, myself and the comic book guys shared some technique and influence so they look similar in some ways, but the intent is completely different.

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Guest Shok1-SINSTARS England

i didn't do that one ;)

 

but expression is something i put a huge amount of importance on. What is the use of a character if it has no character?

 

The best compliment I had for my characters was from a woman at a subsid. of Time Warner Music. She said, "The thing I like about them is that they really look like real live people." Which is an odd thing to say if you think about it because they are totally inhuman looking to me... they're not even really people conceptually a lot of the time, just vehicles for expression, ideas, and actions. She explained further in words to the effect that she could form an emotion connection with them.

 

That to me is the purpose of a character.

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Guest Shok1-SINSTARS England

To sum up what i was saying earlier, mr dek, I personally feel that we as writers pay a lot of attention to the What and the How, but not much to the Why.

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Re: Organic Battle Weapons

 

Originally posted by Shok1-SINSTARS England

Busk got the style from me at Urban Games which is fine by me (as long as he gives me credit ;) )

 

Thats what I was lead to believe. IMO, it's good that he's taken on something like this. I would imagine he'll probably end up taking it in a different direction to yourself because of his own influences and techniques he discovers as he does it more and more. I've always appreciated Busk's work and hopefully he'll stay away from the Koi Carp for the time being!!

 

Now, as far as TDK is concerned, i guess we have common influences in the case of the comic book art, but it seems that most writers over here are less aware of the comic book stuff. I think that their artwork is heavily derivative from the same line of descent as Bisley (ie- fantasy artists like Frank Fanzetta etc)- i don't have an incredibly indepth knowledge of comic book art but it seems to me that their 2000AD work came in later on after Bisley?

 

Quite possibly. It's only in recent years that the mainstream strips like 2000AD have become full colour and this must have played a significant part in the development of comic book art. But my knowledge on the subject is also very limited.

 

i think that there needs to be more dialogue surrounding our influences. What have you referenced? Why? Ultimately, myself and the comic book guys shared some technique and influence so they look similar in some ways, but the intent is completely different.

 

For sure. It took a lot searching through my mental archives to find a comparison ... and even then it's not that close. It's always nice to hear where someone draws upon for their influences, moreso if it's not immediately apparant what they are.

 

Nice one shokkers :)

 

BTW, I linked up sincru.com yesterday from the L12 news page, so hopefully you'll be getting a few people pass on by.

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