At The Bench 504, owner Rob’s pursuit of quality graffiti, and the experience of travelling to paint, has led him to create a thriving business providing an exhibition space for a varied range of illustrators. It’s also enabled him to be involved in a range of projects, as well as protecting local graffiti spaces and introducing youngsters to the skill.

Now based in a Custard Factory Unit, Rob saw a gap in the market and put his savings into opening his own shop selling paints. Progressing from a few years based at a shared shop in Quinton, The Bench 504 now sits overlooking the pond at the Custard Factory, and has a colourful floor to ceiling selection of thousands of paints, which sell Europe-wide from the Birmingham location.

Graffiti artists take time to plan, practicing and sketching, often taking a sketch to the wall. Colour counts as part of the preparation. Getting good takes a lot of practice.

There are a steady stream of customers, as well as those coming to look at the latest exhibition. A customer arrives asking Rob for an order simply by naming the colour  – “I have learnt all the fruits in German and Spanish” Rob laughs, going on to explain that the main brands come from around Europe, and the range he stocks now includes seven brands as the demand grows. The paints stocked at The Bench 504 are highly specialised, some are even artisan – including Spanish brand MTM (Montana) being run by artists who couldn’t get the quality they wanted, so started mixing their own.

The exhibition space in the shop features a different illustrator every four weeks. Until Wednesday 23rd April the exhibition is ‘Off the Rails’ by mixed media artist Lucy Danielle, a Birmingham-based freelance illustrator who studied at Birmingham City University.

Rob was also involved in the future of quality graffiti, ensuring it could continue in the local area. There was a park, Bournbrook Rec, in Selly Oak from the 1980s which councillors were happy to have as a legal space for artists, until mid 2000s when that changed. The local graffiti community gathered a focussed campaign and turned around the council’s opinion of the art, and of the artists, to overturn the decision and re-open the park.

The park is now back in full and frequent use with a high quality of work. The artists know what they can or can’t paint over, as the unwritten rules and etiquette of sharing the graffiti space are self regulated, ensuring they have somewhere to develop the skills and talent to create impressive work.

Rob’s enthusiasm for the art continues, and when the sun is shining the paints fly off the shelves.

To find out more about The Bench 504 visit their website. They are also active on social media: Twitter / Facebook.

Photographs by the author, Kate Wilkins.

On 19th April the Secret Walls Live Illustration Final Battle takes place, after first rounds and semi-finals mid month. Birmingham has gained itself a reputation over recent years, winning and hosting some impressive artist battles.

The event takes place at Boxxed in Digbeth, and you can turn up and pay on the door, or buy tickets in advance through Eventbrite.

If you trawl through the prehistoric timeline in search of the unique ‘Jurassic Panda‘, you’ll discover a very current Gemma Hotchkiss. Birmingham-based artist Gemma created the project a couple of years after completing her degree in Printed Textile Design at Birmingham Institute of Art & Design (BIAD) Gosta Green.

Always encouraged to showcase her sense of humour in her work, the business fist existed as a Uni project entitled ‘Dinosaur Panda’. The name she says, came to her quite randomly;

“I’d always loved dinosaurs and had carried a stuffed panda toy around everywhere with me as a child. It had been pushed in buggies, force-fed food, dressed-up, operated on – you name it! And that’s really where the idea came from.”

She likens the dinosaurs in her designs to young, boisterous children who are best friends with cuddly Panda bears that “just go along with it all”. And why not?

Post-graduation, Gemma – like most – spent some time in the creative wilderness, wondering what it was that really inspired her and how she could turn this into something real. After she’d hand-drawn a variety of designs she felt confident that she’d cracked it and finally figured out how to visualise her sense of humour.

And it was from there, following a quick name-change, that ‘Jurassic Panda’ – the business – came to life.

Gemma searched around and found a couple of UK-based companies that produced printed merchandise in low volumes, and began by creating a few pocket mirrors and postcards.

The next step was all about experimenting, as Gemma explains;

“I set up an Etsy account and had a play around until I got the hang of it all. I then created a website myself using Tumblr, a custom domain name and a bit of very basic HTML.”

She then took to Twitter – @JurassicPanda – and it was there where she discovered an entire community of creatives that were just like her, trying to make a living out of doing what they loved.

“I’ve been lucky enough to have discovered some fantastic creative people through the ‘Jurassic Panda‘ Twitter account. They are extremely generous with their time and knowledge, and I’ve learned a great deal from them all.”

With everything set up and ready to go, Gemma’s shop was quiet at first. But as with any Etsy start-up, it took a lot of patience and time spent social networking before the sales started to come in. From there, Gemma started applying to sell her work at craft fairs.

Visit her shop here and all Created in Birmingham readers can enjoy 10% OFF until the 31st January 2014. Simply enter the code ‘BIRMINGHAM’ at checkout – thanks, Gemma!

You can also see Jurassic Panda in all its scaly, furry and humourous glory this weekend at Small Business Saturday, at The Flapper pub. It’s a FREE event and runs from 12pm until 6pm.

Small Business Saturday is an American concept that exists to encourage everyone to shop only with local or small independent retailers, for one day of the year. It has become such a success in the US that it’s been bought over to the UK.

Gemma has worked in partnership with The Flapper pub to help curate what will actually be 2-day Christmas Bazaar event on Saturday 7th and Sunday 8th December, with Small Business Saturday of course taking-up Saturday’s programme.

The event will showcase talented, local creatives all running their own businesses and feature the unique work of jewellery makers, makeup artists, hair stylists, illustrators and craft makers. There will also be acoustic musicians playing in the bar.

If you can’t make it this weekend, don’t worry. You can catch Gemma at her final event pre-Christmas, on Saturday 14th December in Digbeth at the Custard Factory’s big Christmas event, ‘Digmas’, from 10am until 6pm.

Gemma will also begin 2014 with a creative bang. On Sunday 2nd February she has been invited to be a guest speaker at the NEC’s Spring Fair. She will be giving a talk on how to develop an online concession through a third party website.

So if you’ve a penchant for pandas and a real taste for mash-ups, show your support for extremely talented local artist Gemma Hotchkiss and her beautifully bizarre business, Jurassic Panda.

If you don’t know much about the Birmingham born project then watch the following video’s below that show the framing process by The Framers based in the Custard Factory, the print process of the Poop Deck Project playing cards and a video showing the exhibition space transformed from an empty gallery to a busy launch night.

Inkygoodness: Framing Beermats from Inkygoodness on Vimeo.

The Poop Deck Project printing process.

Inkygoodness: Beermat Characters + The Poop Deck Project Launch from Inkygoodness on Vimeo.

Fused magazine, as part of Eyecandy Festival, are helping out the Oxjam charity this year by calling for submissions for a 12×12 visual interpretation of your favourite record sleeve.

OxjamBrum operates with zero budget; and so we ask that all artists involved kindly donate their services for free, enabling us to make sure every single penny raised goes to Oxfam. This year’s Takeover Festival is raising funds for, and awareness of Oxfam’s GROW campaign. The OxjamBrum Takeover Festival is a major one-day multi-venue celebration of the best of Birmingham’s independent music scene, curated and delivered by a team of dedicated volunteers who know and love the city.

As part of the Eye Candy Festival, an oh so tasty Birmingham celebration of graphic design and illustration, the grand folk of Inkygoodness have announced the details of their open event, entitled SKETCH Brum. Looking to get canvas dressers of all sorts together, this will be a chance for you come down with your pencils and get sketching alongside other illustrators and have a jolly good time.

Being held on 13th October in the French styled Le Truc, the days line up includes:

DJ’S // 3PM – 8PM

AMMO MAGAZINE// 3PM- 8PM

We will also be joined by Ammo Magazine who will be launching an exciting new Illustration Project. More information coming soon…

So on top of getting a chance to rub elbows with local illustrators while you shuffle your pencils, there will also be some of the best local talent doing their thing on large scale; very exciting to see what the outstanding Ammo Magazine has up their sleeve. Check out the mysterious details on the post below…

For more details on the whole day have a click here.

Birmingham’s premier graffiti artist versus illustrator battle ‘Secret Walls‘ has been making a comeback in recent months, with the Rainbow in Digbeth playing host to a series of live drawing sessions between some of the cities most well known sketchers. The artists are given a large canvas and 90 minutes to give it their best, a winner is then chosen to go through to the next round in the tournament.

Here are the official Secret Walls rules:

• 90 minutes on the battle clock
• Only black SW special markers and black acrylic paint can be used as battle weapons
• No pencils / sketches should be on stage or used as reference
• Each artist has to stay within the allocated space, if they creep over then there will be a 1 point deduction
• Battles are judged by 2 nominated and neutral guest judges + crowd vote (3 point system) (using a decibel reader)
• Hosted on giant white walls

This Sunday 5th August will be the third Quater Final, between illustrator Kristain Jones and graffiti artist Lisk Bot. Both have been featured on this blog on several occasions for their outstanding and prolific work, but it’ll be interesting to see how they duel it out. Things kick off at the Rainbow from 7pm and check out the Facebook event for more information.

You can see more of Lee’s work on his flickr account or by visiting his website. Thanks go to the FAKE magazine blog where we noticed this.

Meanwhile, FAKE magaine‘s crowdfunding campaign to produce its second issue has just been extended until 13 October. You can donate to help them get it made on their Crowdfunder campaign page.

Luke Brookes is an illustrator based in Birmingham. His work has a mythical feel, with a focus of fictional characters, along with short stories to accompany some of his pieces. This a cute one about a bear and a fisherman.

He also has a really fun website, complete with rainbows, clouds and a hot air balloon. There’s also plenty more pieces on his blog.

Gareth Weston is a Birmingham based illustrator, specialising in quirky, satirical illustrations.

He holds a penchant for typography, flat colour, disproportionate figures, characters, traditional crafts and techniques and the deeply metaphorical.

Take a look at his growing portfolio containing both hand drawn and digital work.