Those wheatpasted portraits of actors and fictional characters appearing in the streets of Dublin? There's a good chance street artist Pan Cooke, f.k.a. Stephen Cooke, is behind them. Cooke, a 24-year-old business graduate from Dublin, never pursued art in school. Instead, he's made a name for himself in and around Ireland’s booming street art with his painting-style depictions of Peter Pan, Jack Nicholson, and more throughout Dublin.
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It began one afternoon, as he doodled on a bedroom wall. Confronted with one of his biggest artistic challenges ("I always had trouble drawing hair" he tells The Creators Project), Cooke began to improvise. "[One] day I just scribbled in the space where the hair should be and filled in the lines with colors." In this manner, Cooke stumbled upon his very own signature style—a bold kind of block mosaic—with which he created the majority of his most recent works.
"I began learning about 'wheatpasting' shortly after this," he continues. "The first portrait I prepared was a design I created of Robin Williams [below], I printed it out onto a sheet of paper about 4' in height."
Cooke then consider applying this technique to stickers. "The sticker format worked great because it enabled me to spread a single image around quickly as opposed to the time consuming process of wheatpasting," he says. With a growing desire to spread his images faster and further, Cooke alighted upon yet another plan: “A couple of weeks ago I came up with the idea of giving people who were travelling abroad for the summer sticker packs to put up in different cities around the world."Cooke’s designs are now flourishing in major cities including New York, Miami, Bangkok, Singapore, Vancouver, and Sydney, so if you catch faces up on walls while on your travels, be on the lookout.
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Cooke then consider applying this technique to stickers. "The sticker format worked great because it enabled me to spread a single image around quickly as opposed to the time consuming process of wheatpasting," he says. With a growing desire to spread his images faster and further, Cooke alighted upon yet another plan: “A couple of weeks ago I came up with the idea of giving people who were travelling abroad for the summer sticker packs to put up in different cities around the world."Cooke’s designs are now flourishing in major cities including New York, Miami, Bangkok, Singapore, Vancouver, and Sydney, so if you catch faces up on walls while on your travels, be on the lookout.
