Monday 9 March 2009

Newcastle Murals

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I finally got photos of the murals we did at The End bar in Newcastle. It’s the first time I’ve made colour murals so it was a good learning experience. I used Posca pens, which are great. They are essentially like big markers but contain acrylic paint, which has a nice flow and doesn’t smell like alcohol. They come in several different thicknesses but unfortunately their colour range is a bit limited and not all the colours have a good flow when you hold the pen horizontally, i.e. when you work on walls. I also used some spray paint, but sprayed it into the cap and applied it with brushes. I hadn’t really planned the murals at all but I had been drawing a lot of human/animal hybrids in my sketchbook so it seemed natural to do something with that. Tasha and I started with our individual murals and ten made a collaborative mural, which you can see above. The Arm Lady in the middle is mine, while Tasha did everything around her. Some detalis:
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I really like how she grounded the weirdness of the hybrid by having her interact with things that belong in the bar, like a record deck and a keyboard. And the green things are wonderful. The face of the arm-lady, by the way, was inspired by a photograph of a young Katharine Hepburn. I often use photos of interesting faces as starting points for this kind of images. I’m also, quite obviously, very fond of medieval religious imagery and I borrow a lot from its poses and symbolism.
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Here are photos of the two smaller murals I made. Not the greatest space for them but not terrible. The Hairy Snake Lady also came straight out of my sketchbook and then I surrounded her with improvised creatures. What I usually do is I start putting in a few well-placed, large characters and then I fill in the spaces between them with smaller dudes and then the spaces between those and so on. That way I can add stuff almost infinitely but I can also stop if I run out of time, without the piece looking unfinished.


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This one is on the opposite wall.
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All in all, a nice and productive time in Newcastle. Everything was organized by the Ghetto Method Crew. Thanks to Sandy Duff, John Bullock and Dave Guy for a lovely, lovely time.





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