where have you been?!

Hi All!

I’ve had a crazy couple of weeks with some different projects I’ve been working on. Sorry to the lovely guys & girls whose pictures are waiting to be posted, I promise I will make time tomorrow

Some of you guys may know that I’m also a musician. I’ve been making music for the last 25 years or so, as a guitarist, singing and songwriting, but mostly rapping on stage and in the studio as my alter ego Rebel Soul kAYdEE. Music is really ‘my first love’ as the John Miles song goes, and will definitely be my last.

I’ve been recording again over at the home studio of a good client and friend of mine, Dylan Freed. We got on really well after he came and saw me on Greenwich one day. He heard one of my tunes I put on the video I did of the Enfield Mural and after I heard his music we both wanted to record a couple of songs. So I’ve been writing a lot again recently. It’s great cause I’m feeling really inspired but it’s taking a lot of time

This is a video I did a while ago with Jah Kid, a very talented roots singer. The video was produced by Ken Barnes, a friend of mine from Canada and an absolute miracle with a camera.

If you like my video, maybe you’d like to check out my myspace page. I haven’t updated it for a while but there’s some good songs on there

Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten about airbrushing. In fact I’ve been busy with some nice airbrush projects. I will post about them soon But I feel like talking about music and I do like some good tunes when I’m painting in my studio so I thought I’d list a couple of my favorites.

I listen to a lot of different types of music so be warned haha!

I really love this guy, everybody knows him but not every one knows just how amazing Stevie Wonder really is. I’m a huge fan of his 70s and early 80s stuff, where he recorded most of his songs on 8-track playing a lot of the instruments himself. Just for fun do a YouTube search for “Stevie Wonder Drum Solo”. Anyway, here’s Too High, one of my favorites.

I’m a big fan of Marvin Gaye, he’s got an amazing voice and he was really the first artist to do a themed album: What’s Going On (I’ve airbrushed the Album Cover on Canvas, it’s on sale here). This is one of his songs that not everybody knows is his: A Funky Space Reincarnation. He sings sparingly and subdued but really with a lot of feeling and soul.

I love a bit of dirty mothershippin’ stinkalicious 70s funk and it doesn’t get dirtier really than good old Bootsy Collins. This classic of his really sticks it good: I’d Rather Be With You.

I grew up on 90s Hip Hop and this was when a lot of really original groups were blowin up and breakin the boundaries. One of those groups was The Pharcyde and the video to their single Drop of the second album is probably one of the most original videos I’ve ever seen.

I really like fusion and orchestral productions. This is one you might recognize from Dr Dre’s hit The Next Episode. This is the original and it’s by David McCallum, called The Edge.

I couldn’t do this list without including The Legend himself: Bob Marley. I already posted some links to some of his live stuff and used War / No More Trouble in my Airbrushing Haile Selassie video, so I’m posting one of the songs I like to play on guitar. Here’s a beautiful version of Redemption Song.

Another Jamaican group of musicians I really love is Third World. This is the original of the song that was later covered by Heavy D and The Boyz: Now That We Found Love.

From Roots Rock Reggae to Jamaican Ska, here’s one of my favorites and an absolute classic: Desmond Dekker & The Aces – Israelites. I just love the heavy pumpin sound that you get from early Jamaican Ska.

Let’s get into a bit of funk rock by means of California’s Finest: Red Hot Chili Peppers. Don’t need to say much I’m sure, I’ll just link you the haunting Parallel Universe.

Since we’re on the heavy track, I wanted to post some Metallica. I think a lot of people underestimate how influential these guys have been, reachin far beyond the metal scene. I really love their first 4 albums, especially Master of Puppets and ..And Justice For All. Here’s Welcome Home (Sanitarium), one of my favorites.

Let’s finish it off with some psychodelic rock by Iron Butterfly: InAGaddaDaVida. 16+ minutes of hippie madness, you don’t get stuff like that anymore

I have left loooads of favorites out, because I didn’t want to make the list too long. Can’t believe I haven’t mentioned Prince, Curtis Mayfield, Talk Talk or Queen. And only one Hip Hop Anthem! Anyway, there will be other days I’m sure

Hope you guys enjoyed!

Michiel aka Kader aka Rebel Soul kAYdEE

Airbrushing Haile Selassie – Video

I was doing some commissions over the weekend, and since I had some good reactions on the video I posted, I thought I’d switch on the camera while I was doing my portraits.

This is a portrait I airbrushed of Emperor Haile Selassie I. The Rastafarians regard Haile Selassie I as the returned messiah of the Bible, God incarnate. He was the Regent of Ethiopia and  in 1936 he gave a phenomenal speech before the League of Nations (I accidentally put it down as UN speech in the video, my bad).

The song I used for the soundtrack is Bob Marley’s War-No More Trouble, the lyrics for this song are taken from Haile’s speech.The link is for a live performance, which I highly recommend

Unfortunately the YouTube video I posted is banned in the US, because I’ve used  Bob for the soundtrack, but my video on Vimeo seems to be okay, so please check that one if you’re logged in from the States.

And here’s the same thing on Vimeo:

I really enjoyed doing this one, so thanks to Billie who got if for her boyfriend Lewis’ Birthday. Happy Birthday Lewis, hope you had a good one!

I’ve finished the London Room for Inky Fingerz and I’m working on the Paris one. I’ll post the next update soon.

Hope you enjoyed!

Michiel aka Kader

Robert De Niro Airbrushed Mural – Inky Fingerz Project part 1

Hi all,

Below is the video I made while airbrushing the first of 3 walls I’m doing for Inky Fingerz Tattoo Studio. Alex Pullen, the owner, saw me a while ago working in Greenwich and he asked me to do 3 walls in his brand new tattoo shop in Enfield, London.

This is the wall in the New York room, the main tattoo studio. I used Robert De Niro in Godfather as the main image, combined with a Manhattan street scene. I had to do a lot of masking for the background, to get the buildings nice and straight. The portrait is airbrushed freehand. Unfortunately my camera was unable to take a good picture of it, the lighting is a bit off.

You can view the video on Vimeo:

Or watch it on YouTube (same video):

I’ll post part 2 and 3 soon, when I’ve finished all the work and the editing of the video.

The song featuring in the video is “Blaze it Up (rmx)” one of my own tracks.

Hope you enjoyed!

Michiel aka Kader

Just a quicky!

I started on a mural in Enfield Tuesdays and I’ve got a couple of commissioned portraits so I wasn’t on the market Sunday. I did take a couple of snaps Saturday as I was working. I’ve also got a couple of pics I haven’t posted yet, so I’m putting them all together.

On the left are Alice and her friend (who’s name I forgot to write down… sooooorry). I airbrushed them a new Superman design I’ve started doing. Alice wanted her name on the shirt and her friend really likes swimming, so she’s a Superswimmer

On the right is Lucia, who asked me to airbrush a Bart Simpson on the T shirt she wanted for her friend Ziggy. I picked a grumpy Bart and she liked it because she said Ziggy likes to look grumpy too LOL!

On the left I was asked to put Darth Vader on a T shirt. It caused quite a couple of reactions after I airbrushed the text beneath his mask. I do have to mention that as far as I know Vader is not a robot, but I guess he does have the force so…

Ciara didn’t just want any hi-tops on her shirt, she wanted me to airbrush her black Chuck Taylor All Stars.

The one on the left was for a young Batman and Lego fan. What better way to celebrate the two?

Britons are known as Poms in Oz (Australia). Joe D’s father, who got a shirt for him before, asked me to airbrush a T shirt for him to wear during his 6 month trip down under. I thought: “what’s more British than a black cab?”

Here’s a couple of good life lessons for.. well.. anyone I guess! Maurice asked me to airbrush these for his little sister. Apparently he’s been drilling these for some time, but he just wanted to make sure she wouldn’t forget

Max is mad about skateboarding – his mom asked me to put a skateboard on his T.

The heart on the left is a copy I made of a drawing that was made by a friend of my client (see? did it again, no names.. bugger! She asked me to put it on a shirt for her.

On the right is the shirt I did for Naoishe (it’s an Irish name, pronounced Na-ee-shay). Her dad is a naval officer who was in town and he asked me airbrush this for his daughter, who is mad about pirates!

That’s a quick update from me. Going back to Enfield tomorrow to work on the mural. I’ve taken some pics etc, and I’ll be taken a lot more!

Hope you enjoyed

Michiel aka Kader.

How I airbrushed Benji as Che Guevara

This is Benji, he’s one of the guys who work at Greenwich Market and a good friend of mine. He loves the Che Guevara shirts I airbrush and he asked me if I could turn him into Che. Here’s how I did it.

I started off with taking a picture of him in a fairly similar pose. The light in the Guerrillero Heroico picture of Che is quite iconic, but difficult to replicate so I’ll have to adapt as I airbrush.

I used my fabric stencil to airbrush my outlines onto the T shirt. You can see I have both pictures in sight as I’m airbrushing.

Because I don’t want lose my stencil image, I start off with defining the features before I work on the rest of the face. Because of this I airbrush the same features more than once as overspray from doing the skin tone next will lighten my shadows, but this also gives a layered effect.

I’m done airbrushing most of the skin tone and indeed some of the shadows I added to the mouth, nose and eyes need darkening again. This is not a problem, I was only keeping the features in the right shape. In this case I have taken much of the shadow out of the original photograph I took, because I now want to add the lighting from the Guerrillero picture.

I’m now looking at the Che picture while I’m adding shadow to Benji’s face. I imagine how the same light would catch his features and slowly airbrush the shadows in the right direction.

After this I start adding Che’s hair and hat to Benji’s face and finalising the shadows on face.

This is the final result. You can see I’ve put the hat neatly on his head and airbrushed Che’s iconic long hair and jacket. Chengi (as we now call him) was very happy with it, and I had a lot of fun airbrushing this one.

Let me know if you want to be a Che too, or maybe I can turn someone into Terminator? LOL

Hope you enjoyed

Michiel aka Kader.

A couple of smiles on a rainy weekend

It was a very quiet weekend on Greenwich Market. Sunday was the quietest I’ve seen it for a while, so a lot of traders took time to go around the market and have a look at each other’s stalls. We had a bit of fun, but of course I did a bit of work as well

This is Patch, he was really excited about his airbrushed sneakers T shirt. He wanted to put it on right away and he liked the idea of being on my blog but he didn’t really want to stand still for his picture. He stayed just long enough for me to get this big smile off of him

Owen asked me if I could put a pair of cross guns on his T shirt. He wanted me to airbrush his name in blue, so I did it like I do my full colour graffiti names. I think the guns came out pretty cool.

This is Robert. He really liked my art and saw the pirate skull I had hanging on my stall. He asked if I could airbrush one without the pirate stuff so I gave  him a regular cross bones. He also had some nice images that he wanted me to airbrush for him and his girlfriend, I’ll make sure I take some pics as I’m doing them.

The weather turned really bad on Sunday, so I’ve been in bed with flu and fever since Monday, but I thought I’d better post my pictures and get some work done. Doing a big mural in Enfield next week. I’m hoping to take lots of pics then.

I’ve also taken some pics while I was turning Benji, one of the markets porters into Che Guevara. I’ll post them soon too.

Hope you enjoyed

Michiel aka Kader.

Airbrushed Portraits & Animals

Here are a couple of images I airbrushed recently:

On the left is Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator 3. The other picture is a copy of pencil drawing a client gave to me.

This is a half Unicorn half Pegasus that I airbrushed from a medallion of one of my clients. She asked me to do two versions each with a quote.

The one on the left was on a ladies longsleeve t shirt, and I airbrushed the other on the back of the hoodie on the right, with the wolf’s head you see on the front.

This is the picture I took of the medallion. It was quite a nice job, I hadn’t really done anything like this before.

She was quite happy with the results and I think I did a good job on the mythical creature as well.

On the left is Marie Fredriksson and on the right is Per Gessle, the duo better known as Roxette, the popular 80s rock band. I’ll do a making of Marie next time, when I post a couple of the pics I took when I airbrushed her.

Saving the best for last: these are two of my favorite musicians. legendary jazz musician Miles Davis on the left and the great reggae legend Bob Marley on the right. I didn’t think these artists needed any explaining, so the links are 2 great live performances, courtesy of YouTube

Hope you liked my portraits.

Michiel aka Kader.

Ripping up some airbrushed superhero t shirts

About a year ago a customer asked me if I could airbrush a superman logo on a XXL t shirt. I said that it wouldn’t be a problem, but asked him if he wanted me to do something special with it, make it look like somebody ripped his t shirt and his superman suit was underneath it.

I had the t-shirt on my stall for a day waiting for him to pick up the shirt and had a load of requests and comments. Of course I’ve been making them since, and have airbrushed other ripped superhero t shirts as well.

These are some of the superhero t shirts I ripped, ehrm I mean airbrushed.

Flash on the left here and Green Lantern, and of course I couldn’t forget the one below:

I airbrushed some ripped coloured t-shirts as well, but of course  idiot-me forgets to take pictures…. a lot..

Hope you enjoyed!

Michiel aka Kader

Why so serious on a Harley – airbrushed on a black T shirt.

Pierre, an Australian client of mine had seen my version of the Joker when he was in Greenwich with his son JP. They both liked it and had asked if I could airbrush Heath Ledger’s Joker sitting on a Harley Davidson. This is the T shirt I airbrushed for him.

First I start of with tracing the drawing I did on my fabric stencil. After that I start adding a layer of white, starting with the face.

After the face I start outlinging the rest of the image. Again I start shaping the light parts and work my way back with shadows afterwards.

On the left I have finished the first layer of white. Here is where I really start focussing on the shadows.

This the last pic I took before I finished airbrushing the T shirt. On the right you’ll see the Harley that I used as my motorbike of choice.

I’ll post some superheroes next, and some other portraits I’ve done. I’ve also taken some pics while I was airbrushing Roxette’s Marie Fredriksson on a black ladies T shirt.

Hope you enjoyed.

Michiel aka Kader.

Why So Serious? Airbrushing The Joker

“I believe… whatever doesn’t kill you simply makes you…stranger.” Heath Ledger (4 April 1979 – 22 January 2008) as The Joker

I love this image! I’m quite picky when it comes to movies, but I rate The Dark Knight as one of the best movies ever, up there with Taxi Driver, Heat and Scarface. I feel really sorry for the next actor who is asked to play The Joker. How do you compete with Heath?

Especially when you’re airbrushing a portrait, you have to be careful with perspective. Because you’re standing very close to your canvas (in this case T shirt) it’s easy to stretch things as you’re looking down. It also doesn’t help to be 6’4″.

I’ve started using fabric stencils, which basically means I draw the outline of the portrait on a thin piece of calico and then with my airbrush spray the basic elements through the calico drawing onto the t shirt. I used to do them entirely freehand, but it saves a lot of time and allows me to keep my cost down

Here I’ve started shaping the face with opaque white. I tend to go straight into details shaping the face piece by piece. It’s all about light and shade with airbrushing, so I start with a lot of light.

Hair is also something that comes in layers. as hairs fall over each other they cast shadows, but the bottom hairs still catch light from above. after I finish the facial shadows I go over the hair with a layer of black and then add a little bit of highlight on some of the hairs, making it appear as though the hair is layered.

As you can see the face has really taken shape now. From here on all I have to do is finish the hair and highlight the skin so it really catches the light. The result is up at the top.

I’ll post the next ‘Making of The Joker’ tomorrow, where I have to recreate the Joker sitting on a Harley for an Australian client.

Hope you enjoyed,

Michiel aka Kader