Tuesday 12 November 2013

The Gold Lady


Last week I was asked to produce an illustration that would run alongside a beer and curry night, the brief was fairly open giving me a lot of creative wiggle room, the criteria to fill; Indian and decorative.
Armed with the excuse of 'researching' I was happily absorbed for the next hour or so in a whirlwind of embroidered saris, sequinned bindis and pretty Asian ladies.

Composition wise I needed to leave enough blank space to accommodate the text that would explain the event but this would luckily balance out any heavy detail, allowing me to get trigger happy with henna inspired patterns!
I also had to bear in mind that I was going to need to turn my illustration into a life sized version for the accompanying wall mural.


This was the outcome and unknown to me at the time, the easy part. 
Next came the wall painting/drawing, not having actually drawn on walls before I was in the dark as to what the effect might be.. 



Despite a few misplaced smudges and smears needing to be fixed a face did emerge from the wall, a bit of a ghostly face to begin with, but a face none the less!


 

The picture above shows the organised mess that helped create her including; pens, pencils, paint, paint pens, paint brushes, gold ink and various unhealthy snacks.

And not to forget a final sprinkle of hand glued gems hidden amongst her jewellery and bodice to give her an extra bit of sparkle.





Tuesday 5 November 2013

Bring on the wall


A short while ago I made up for 1/4 (not counting the much appreciated occasional extra helping hand) of team mural!

The challenge, set to Sarah aka Inkymole, was a seriously big wall, 15 metres to be roughly exact. The client; Briggs Hillier, a company responsible for creating retail environments for companies such as Schuh, Adidas, Harrods and River Island.



The mural was set to include all manner of objects relating to the company; from baby Nike shoes to the famous buildings that populate the various countries that they have worked in.

All fanned out around the keystone of the piece, a famous quote by Dieter Rams brought to life by Sarah's hand.

You can find a much more detailed explanation of her in-depth design process here.

Plenty to get stuck in with then.. The building itself was still in it's infancy with no main lighting and no stairs. Cue a rather ungraceful clamber to the first floor via ladder, feeling a little like I was entering some sort of giant industrial tree house.

Reporting in for painting duty and battling consecutive 12 hour shifts, despite breeze block not being the most co operative of canvases, the wall began to take shape!
 


Now for some 'look how hard we're working' action shots;


It was an exciting, tiring and educational experience, throwing up questions (perhaps down to the constant exposure to paint fumes) such as whether there was actually life outside of the wall and why does this drill I've drawn look like a pregnant goldfish?

Realising that I’d clocked in more hours with ‘the wall’ than I had with any other person that week and after having a particularly tricky run in with 'Moscow', it was luckily about time to call it quits.

And this is the final finished product, I think the wall's looking pretty content in it's newly transformed setting and we're pretty chuffed with it too!