Art Portfolio
Quickly made 3D interactive sketch/ composition, using A-frame, with sound. For best results, please view in Chrome browser.
I tried to capture the moment in this quick sketch. I enjoyed playing with depth here, using A-frame.
Though just a quick sketch I like the roughness or the rawness of the result.
This is a small (A5) acrylic painting, on paper. It was made in response to a UK arts competition, and responding to events at the recent Aintree Grand National, where high dangerous fences regularly badly (often fatally) injure horses. The danger of the race course is what makes this race special, but the horses suffer.
In my painting two men take an injured prizewinning horse behind a screen, away from the public view, and shoot it. This was a quick painting with little detail, and I think it expresses the emotion and horror.
Horse experts argue medical technology isn’t advanced enough to save the horses if they suffer serious injuries, and they have no choice but to put the animal out of their misery.
This seems a brutal and harsh end of life for these beautiful intelligent animals, which have worked hard for their owners – and often generated huge sums of prize money.
Once they aren’t useful, they shoot them.
I grew up not far from there, and the Grand National was always a special event, and most people would place a bet. The animal welfare was never discussed or considered.
This is a big subject, and horrific. Further reading on the cruelty of horse racing:
https://plantbasednews.org/culture/ethics/horse-racing-cruel
https://www.peta.org.uk/blog/the-grand-national-9-things-they-dont-tell-you-about-horse-racing/
https://www.animalaid.org.uk/the-issues/our-campaigns/horse-racing/ban-the-grand-national/
Digital drawing, about a party. Maybe it’s a party that’s gone on too long, in the summer, and everyone’s had too much to drink.
I was thinking about expensive prestigious horse races and the fancy clothes that people wear at races.
But also the sort of people who go the races, the rich and the very rich, and the class aspects involved in this.
Going to the Races is a world I’ve never experienced first hand.
This is just quick a sketch, but it gives me ideas for areas of future exploration. Class seems to lie at the bottom of many of my art works, and is a subject I want to explore further.
https://boomar.github.io/eatout2helpout/
For best results, please view in Chrome browser.
This is an immersive VR political comic, telling a satirical story using WebVR software, and exploring the aesthetic and narrative possibilities of the medium.
It tells the news story of the UK government’s hugely popular ‘Eat Out to Help Out” scheme during the Covid pandemic (2020), where 100 million restaurant meals were consumed. The scheme arguably boosted Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s political popularity, but evidence shows the scheme likely contributed to the deadly second wave of the pandemic.
Artistic influences on this work include André Fougeron’s painting ‘Atlantic Civilisation’, a panorama of over 5.5m wide, telling a vast political narrative, in a comic style. Other influences were Cold War Steve’s vicious political photocollages and David Hockney’s wide immersive panoramas.
The work explores the aesthetics possibilities of WebVR, using the A- frame framework.
An A-frame scene is composed of multiple layers of drawings, separated by distance along the Z-axis, and overlapping. Authoring HTML in A-frame forces a layered approach, as a scene contains a list of entities. This aesthetic – the separation of successive 2D layers within a 3D space gives a feeling of space and depth, resulting in an effect like a traditional Diorama.
I was attracted by the fishbowl distortion of the drawings, when moving around the immersive 3D space, which felt like moving around inside a sphere, zooming in and out of the entities.
This is a panoramic story, told over time. A-frame seems to lend itself to a wide or panoramic storytelling.
Theme: Storytelling in Immersive Media
An experiment in AR aesthetic approaches, and narrative composition in political comics.
This “AR Vignette” is a tiny multimedia comment on the news. The AR effect is a 3D montage of overlapping flat planes, similar to old traditions, particularly Dioramas. These AR montages (through association, positioning and juxtaposition) tell stories in a particular aesthetic.
The technology used is AR.js and A-Frame. AR.js is a lightweight library for AR on the Web. A-Frame allows the creation of 3D Scenes and Virtual Reality experiences.
The subject for the work is the UK Care Homes during the Pandemic. The Government imposed strict rules, no visitors or physical contact. Daily on TV Health Secretary Matt Hancock announced rules from the podium – social distancing, no hugging. Yet at the same time, he was having an affair with his secretary, meeting in secret at Whitehall.
His response was “Well, I’m only human”
Composition analysis
The park alongside Parliament serves as the backdrop and Tracking Image. Scanning the Tracking Image opens up Hancock’s face – big with a transparent mask. We see through where he speaks, which is where we witness his betrayal, secretly embracing his mistress. In front of the mask, we see a care home with a family gathered outside, waving through the window. On the opposite side, Hancock stands at the podium. Hancock apologises throughout.
This experiment into narrative composition and the aesthetics of AR considers narrative possibilities of see-through shapes and over and around layered shapes and objects, exploring foregrounding, depth, layering, and what lies behind. It tells a story through layering and positioning, and transparency within drawings. It explores photocollage, digital drawings, mixed media, multimedia, and narrative composition.
Using your phone, scan the QR code:
Then point your camera at this picture:
Narrative composition, graphic novel style, summarising visually the Michelle Mone PPE scandal.
Who is Baroness Mone?
The 51-year-old is a businesswoman and the founder of lingerie company Ultimo.
Born in Glasgow, she left school with no qualifications at 15 and went on to launch ventures in diet pills, fake tan and cryptocurrency. She became a Conservative life peer in 2015.
What is the PPE controversy?
The row around PPE Medpro started back in 2020, when reporters first began asking questions about Baroness Mone’s apparent links to the company.
In 2021, the government revealed that she had referred PPE Medpro via the VIP lane system, with the company awarded two contracts worth £200m.
Last month, Lady Mone faced allegations that she had profited from the business, a claim she denies.
How did the PPE contract system work?
The VIP lane system saw a separate mailbox set up for MPs to send on offers from firms, but led to the government being criticised for giving preferential treatment to companies with political contacts.
What investigations are under way?
Lady Mone is currently under investigation by the House of Lords commissioner for standards, with parliament’s website saying the probe is over “alleged involvement in procuring contracts for PPE Medpro leading to potential breaches…of the House of Lords code of conduct”.
PPE Medpro has also become the subject of a potential fraud investigation by the National Crime Agency.
What does Baroness Mone say?
Baroness Mone has consistently denied any “role or function” in the company, with lawyers previously saying she is “not connected to PPE Medpro in any capacity”.
(From Sky News: https://news.sky.com/story/michelle-mone-who-is-she-and-what-is-the-ppe-controversy-swirling-around-the-tory-peer-12762756)
Graphical composition about Johnson and Lebedev, in the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Summarises and condenses the situation in a composition. An informed artwork that incorporates the news, opinions and emotions.
Refugees – UK response – Calais (April 2022)
UK visa response to Ukrainians “shameful”.
The Home Office turned away Ukrainian refugees escaping the war because they didn’t have the right paperwork.
A Ukrainian woman and her 8-year-old daughter slept rough for 4 days and nights in freezing temperatures to cross the Polish border, only to be refused entry to the UK at Calais.
We cannot turn our back on those fleeing persecution in Ukraine. The UK must give an ambitious commitment to resettle Ukrainian refugees in the UK.
In comparison with the rest of Europe the UK government is harsher on Ukrainian refugees but softer on Russian oligarchs.
They dont want to let them in. They pretend we are doing more than everyone else, and lie about it.
For the Tories, demonising foreign “others” has long been a convenient means of diverting working-class anger at economic insecurity away from powerful interests. They have always demonised and scapegoated migrants and refugees. The last thing these people want is more refugees, they think the UK “can’t afford” them and it should “look after its own first”.
A colouring and activity book for grown-ups
Looking back over the past three years, Brexit has proved more gripping than any TV drama or Zombie movie; glueing the UK public to their seats while the EU and rest of the world look on in amazement and horror as a once great nation spirals into terminal decline.
Buy the book online (Etsy): https://etsy.me/2M74948
This colouring and activity book captures the excitement and craziness of the period – the characters, the locations, the slogans, the lies, scheming and nail-biting political crises in dot-to-dot scenes and colouring pages. Character trivia, cool anecdotes and Brexit facts are mixed in along the way, so you can re-live the intensity of those memorable Brexit moments.
This is a 100 page colour book, A4 format, for sale in selected bookshops in London. £ 11.50.
Buy the book online (Etsy): https://etsy.me/2M74948
