Music, Art, and Graffiti [A Digital Collaboration @donnadavisart + ...

This article by @donnadavisart is part of a blockchain collaboration series. Learn more about the Sndbox #cryptocollab initiative, here.

Discovering A New Collaborator

This month in the Sndbox - we were asked to collaborate with fellow Steemians. I found this a wise choice and the natural progression of our learning to build the skills that make living in this digital world better. The result is both better for the creator as well as the viewer and I was rather excited about it.

I was lucky to have found a great partner in fellow Sndbox cohort with the talented @djlethalskillz. He is an amazing beat maker / hip hop artist /producer. I liked the idea that he creates a type of music that I don't listen to on the daily. I felt it would take me to a new place; transport me out of my usual very insular introverted artist space.

This is what one expects or desires in a collaboration: To go to a new place, one you would not visit of your own volition. When I heard the track we decided to use as our inspiration I was immediately drawn in. I felt a transcendence to another place and thought I would begin sketching straight away. In fact, I felt more moved to sit and listen. I kept the music on repeat for the day, as I went about my to-doing and the result was that it sort of got under my skin. It truly took me to a new place.

Music, Art, Graffiti

My usual reaction and preparation for a piece of artwork is sketching and planning and structuring an idea. It can have many iterations before I get to a 'final' piece. But, with this collaboration I wanted to to be different. To be a reaction to the way the music made me feel.

I was not sure of the artists original intent for the music, but for me the soundscape brought me to an urban place. I felt myself walking the city streets in the great areas outside London and it's environs where one is subject to amazing street art / graffiti. I was lucky enough to stay with a friend who lives in Finsbury Park and the Parkland walk from there to Crouch end has some amazing graffiti. It is a wondrous mix of nature and trees interjected with exposed brick and stone as palette for the artist.

Petticoat Lane in London's East End is another great area for fashion and Street Art.

Listening and Reacting

A place I often find myself wanting to peruse as a counterpoint to central London's high end galleries and museums. Art has no boundaries or class and it's inspiration will find itself everywhere. And @djlethalskillz track kept taking me to these urban artist's haunts.

Having decided to ditch my usual sketch and plan mode, I found myself inspired by the track to make over a piece I was working on the day I was listening to the track. Here is the amazing track made by @djlethalskillz.

As I have been busy attempting to ink most days of October's #inktober, I was thoroughly engaged in a piece whilst listening. Thus when I sat down to create the piece most inspired by the track I found that I wanted to approach my latest black and white inked piece in a graffiti-like fashion. This was the inked piece which was based around my month's theme of 'witches and their familiars'.

The piece was based on a real life statue in America that had in fact received it's own graffiti during the occupation marches. This had not been an intentional choice when I was creating the original ink, but as the day went on I wondered how much the music I was listening to had somehow subconsciously taken me there.

I decided then that I wanted to approach the collab piece in a more graffiti style almost tagging my own work. The result was playing with my piece digitally using some of my own photographs of graffiti I had collected and cutting and pasting in a collage style digitally. Then I began 'spray painting' into the piece in the programme Painter.

Building Digital Dialogue

A digital approach to a digital song created in digital space for a digital collaboration it just all made sense.

I had created a new piece that had me dreaming of my amazing walks in London as well as taking me to a new approach to my own work. This is exactly what one would hope to get from a collaboration. An 2-d artist is often inspired by music and the change in the variety of that music results in the artist going new places. And that is what art should be, a reevaluation of self and environment through outside sources.

Overall, I have to say I was very inspired by this collaboration and in general always impressed with Sndbox in their ability to create an environment of community and creativity. I hope this little bit has inspired some of you to go out and team up with your fellow Steemians or other's in your social media circles to try out something new.

This post was authored by @donnadavisart, a member of the sndbox incubator. Learn more, follow @donnadavisart or begin a conversation in the comment section below.

^{Empower artists, writers, musicians, non-profits and community initiatives - delegate Steem Power to @sndbox (using the links below) or follow our curation trail. Learn more about Sndbox - watch our introduction, here.}