Hawes Side Academy Picasso Wall Mural

 For the past few weeks I've been working on my biggest art project to date.  A well paid job which, now it has been completed, will leave me financially secure for a little while, allow me to relax a bit and get on with personal projects and do things that I wouldn't normally have time to do if I was scrabbling for work to pay the bills! I'm not a money person, I just want to draw, paint, create and spend time with good people and live a happy life, so being given an opportunity like this is golden to me. It can be tough sometimes trying to make ends meet as an artist!
  So this project, initially began back in August when I was contacted by Wendy Barnes, the art teacher at Hawes Side Academy, which is only 20 minutes walk down the road from my house!
  We met up at the school before the kids came back in September, along with headmaster Mike Shepherd and discussed what they wanted me to do. 

They have a 164 foot 'wall', made from wooden panels, which separates the playground from a building site which is actually where the new school is being built as I write this.  The existing school will eventually be knocked down in around a years time, so they wanted a mural painting on the wall, something bright and colourful that the children can appreciate as they play in the yard.  The idea was, using pastel drawings the children did in class based on Picasso's work, make a new design that looks almost like the children have done it themselves!

Now at first I thought, 'hmm, this isn't what I was expecting!'.  Having to paint it like a child could be very difficult, especially using spray paint which I've only been using properly for a few years and still have a lot to learn about.  Also, in my own work, I like to be very neat and tidy and when using spray paint, I tend to mask off straight edges and make big shapes and it can be time consuming, but I thought, oh well I like a challenge and with a nice chunk of funding money being offered, I couldn't afford not to try!

 So I agreed to the project and on the 8th September, I went into the school and with Wendy introducing me, I did an assembly for the children, showing them examples of some of the work I've done over the years.  Now if like me, as an artist, you've ever doubted yourself and questioned whether what you do is any good, I tell you now, children will make you forget about all of that!
As I clicked through the images of my work on the projector screen, they were 'wowing' and cheering, even started clapping. it was quite overwhelming at times! When I left the school that day, I went away feeling very positive about the project. 

  Over the next week or so, I made stencil templates on the computer for the words that were going to be included in the mural (Community, Learning, Creativity, Harmony and Hawes Side Academy), I collected up hundreds of drawings from the children and went through them all at home to pick the ones I would use in the final design and by the 22nd September, I was given full use of the art room at the school to sit in and create the final design, made from the 12 drawings I'd chosen. (the wall is 41 panels wide, each panel is 7 foot tall and 4 foot wide, but I was only painting on 26 of them, 104 foot of mural!) I also used the room to cut the stencils which I'd had printed at Granthams.

Once I had the final design mapped out, I had to colour match the spray paint I was going to need using the colour chart on the Graff City website.  Wendy asked that it be as true as possible to the pastel colours the children had used in their drawings. Then it was time to order the paint.  I met with Chris Strange, the business manager for the school and put the order in, which arrived at the school the next day (25th September)

I know a lot of artists and friends will agree with me on this, it's almost like Christmas morning when a big paint order arrives! haha! And this was a nice order of paint, spray caps and new mask. A treat to open!

It was actually good fun trying to create the final design using the same pastels the kids had used in their drawings.  A little bit messier than I would normally be comfortable with, but I just went with it and tried to free myself from my usual OCD tendencies!
  I hung the design up on the washing line in the art room and had Wendy and Mike take a look. they were very pleased with it and it was time to start the mural itself on the 29th September. (there had been some waiting involved anyway as the contractors on the site said the boards needed strengthening before i painted them, so I'd been getting on with other work in between designing the mural)

As I said before, I would normally use spray paint in my own work in a more controlled way, masking off and filling big shapes of colour and possibly adding details in freehand with Posca paint pens, so when I began painting this thing, I was a bit twitchy about going at it so freely! 

Wendy assured me not to worry about making mistakes, about lines being neat and even about over spray or colours merging together. Just think like a child and crack on! (now this is quite a task in itself really, as little kids can't hold and spray with a can at the same time, as I discovered back in the days of Baseline studio when Catch22 brought his boys in and let them have a go)

But as I got into it, it became easier and a lot more fun to do! 

One tiny gripe I could have was that the height and position of the wall meant I was always working in shadow and trying to take photos of it as I went along, the sun was facing me from over the wall as I faced it! Not a major problem, but when spraying in big areas of colour, I sometimes couldn't see until afterwards that I'd left streaks in places. (As I mentioned earlier though, I still have a lot to learn about using spray paint, including filling areas neatly, so I put some of it down to that fact and not just that I was working in shadow! plus, it didn't REALLY matter that much as I was painting it like a child! haha! Another reason why this was a good project for me to do.  I was able to almost practise and experiment as I went along and then either leave it or go over it. )

Due to the nature of spray paint being very harmful, I couldn't have the children being around whilst I painted the mural and the teachers were all very accommodating in taking the children out at break times to other parts of the yard round the corners away from the wall. At 12.30 every day they had lunch and came out into the yard though and that's when I'd stop for an hour. The children were so positive about the project and I had many a comment said to me as I was finishing for lunch.

They'd say hello to me in the corridor waving 'Hi David' and telling me that I was doing a good job and that it was looking fabulous or awesome! haha! One little lad came out into the yard one day and saw me and shouted 'face painter' haha! Kids are funny! 

By the 2nd October I was more than half way done.  I wasn't working on it at weekends so had time to rest and I have problems with my back anyway so I needed to take it easy. The weather has been great these past few weeks, but there were a couple of rainy days that I couldn't work on. 

I'd actually made another drawing from my final design that incorporated the words into the mural a little better and helped me space the 12 images out over the 26 panels.  Just realised I didn't take a photo of that drawing to include in this write up.  When it came to actually painting the design onto the wall, I also realised that due to the size of the panels, the design changed again during the process and some of the faces had to be wider or smaller that the ones I'd drawn.  Also, as well as the 12 drawings that I used, Wendy had given me some paintings that the key stage one children had done of Blackpool land marks like the Tower and the Big One and images of beach balls and buckets and spades that they wanted including in it as well. 

 On the 8th October I'd painted all the artwork on and it was time to get the stencils out and paint them in. Teaching assistant Matt Smith gave me a hand taping them all on and I got the thing finished just as the parents started arriving to pick up their kids.

It's been a great experience working on the project and even though it's not a true representation of my own work, I'm still quite proud to have completed it.  Picasso has always been one of my favourite artists growing up and to have been chosen to come in and recreate some of his work in this way is a good thing.  Big thanks to Wendy and Mike for getting me involved, all the staff for their patience and accommodating me while I worked and especially to all the children who were so receptive to the project, I've come away feeling very positive about it.

Nice little bonus in that there was a good chunk of unused paint left afterwards that they let me keep, so that will go to good use in my own work! Also, Wendy mentioned getting the newspaper people in to cover it so watch this space for that! 

Thanks for reading 

Lab Rats: Big Men on Campus!

For the past few months, the Lab Rats (myself and good friend/fellow artist He Dreamt Mars) have been employed by Blackpool and The Fylde College to hold a number of art workshops at their Park Road Gateway campus, culminating in us painting a large 60 foot wall mural outside.
  For obvious reasons, we can't take pictures of the students in class, so what follows is documentation of the designs the students did during the workshop sessions (example above) and the resulting wall mural.
A friend of mine Steve Stroud works for the college and it was he who initiated the project. (thank you Steve!)

They weren't sure at first if they wanted the final wall mural to be a collaboration between us and the students, but in the end, they decided they'd prefer it if we just painted it ourselves based on the designs the students gave us. (adding our own twist of course!)
  The designs were a mixed bunch of things they liked and depictions of activities and classes they hold at the college, such as travel and tourism, catering, fashion and hairdressing.

It took the students a little while to warm up in the art sessions, we felt we had our work cut out for us at first, but they soon started enjoying it and the designs started to come out.  I guess it can be a little daunting having two professionals come in and try and get you to do something like this!
  After all, the whole college will be able to see the end results on the mural every day.

Once the designs were coming out on paper, we could start to formulate a plan of how we would piece them together on the wall and also who would be painting what.

I often draw/paint triangles with eyes in them in my work (not Illuminati as people always try and tell me! I just like how they go together) so it was decided I would take on that design and also the very detailed wedding dress design drawn by a girl from Thailand. 

  Once we had all the designs in, we could work out what colours we would need and the paint order was put in at Graff City online shop and the wood we'd be painting onto was ordered also.

The first day of painting would fall during half term, so the college agreed to let me take the box of paint home once it had arrived, as there'd be no one around on site to give us access to it.

  Opening it up was like Christmas morning! So many tins of paint and boxes of Posca paint pens. Big smiles all round! haha! 

(it weighed 25 kg though, not easy carrying it up to my 3rd floor apartment!)

The day we were supposed to start painting, we got down there and saw that the guys were nailing the final bits of outdoor plywood to the wall.  Big grins from both of us seeing that blank wall and once they brought out the white emulsion and brushes for us, we were keen to get crackin'! 

It's definitely the longest wall either of us have ever painted, as a duo or as individual artists and we could probably complete a wall that size in a day if we had free reign on the design, but this wasn't one of those.

  The art sessions themselves were spread out over a few months and we were well paid accordingly, so we were quite happy to work within a time frame that saw us being paid monthly up until its completion. 

It was good to finally start putting spray paint on the freshly mulshed wall.  As with a lot of our wall projects, we'd sketched out a few VERY rough plans of how we would piece the designs together.(not worth showing you those designs, they are just to make us laugh!)

  At first we toyed with the idea of having 8 bold designs (to cover the 8 panels of wood) that stood alone side by side, but in the end, we went with an idea that tied them into each other. 

Ben and I know each other from way back in our skateboarding days as teenagers, but it's only in the last few years (partly through me running NW Baseline studio- R.I.P) that we have become firm friends. Our shared love of art, hip hop and science has brought us closer together and we always have fun wether we are on the job or just hanging out. 

  So with our ammo of Montana 94 cans and Posca paint pens, the maze was set and the Lab Rats were ready to roll once more! 

Ben started off with the tree design on the left side of the wall and I opted to create an abstract of the Blackpool Tower round about the middle. Rather than complete full panels at a time however, we moved about, adding bits in here and there from each design so we could get an idea of how it would come together. 

  We are both still fairly new to spray painting (taking part in urban painting events over the last 4 years), but it's been great seeing each other progress, getting better at free hand lines and creating bigger and bolder pieces each time. 

I've used the old TV test card screen motif in a design before (Brandalism project) and I decided to go with it again when recreating the triangle and technology design one of the students did. 

 Can I just at this point thank our friend Rob Draper AKA Bobby Boulders for taking some of the photos.  Always keen to lend a hand that boy! 

That first day we worked on the wall, both of us ended up with knackered backs! 

  Failure to limber up beforehand left us both in agony (the height of the wall didn't help, we kept stooping to paint little bits here and there!) and I was unable to walk properly for a week afterwards. (I've done serious damage to mine before and I've never really recovered from that)

  After going to see my friend Sarah, master of the Bowen Technique and being 'fixed', I was soon on the mend and ready to paint again, although as you will all know, the weather in Blackpool isn't great at the best of times, add to that the fact Ben also works full time at The Reptile Rooms, so we were playing it by ear a lot and going down there when we could. 

There were a couple of times I had to go down there on my own.  Keen to keep the momentum going and the tower design I'd started was time consuming. Looking at it now, there's probably too much detail on that one to be honest, but I've often found it hard to know when to stop and once I've started down a path,  I want to see it through! 

Ben had told me that he'd been holding off on the design featuring the lady with the coloured hair pattern, but once he decided on a colour scheme and felt it was time, it was fun to watch it come together.  That blue and orange combo looks poppin' in the sunlight! 

 Round about this time, I decided to alter the olympic rings/flame motif I'd started on a panel further down.  I wasn't happy with how the flames were looking.  As I said earlier, we are still fairly new to spray painting and I felt I wasn't getting the look of the fire quite right, so I opted to paint over it and give it a flatter, more abstract feel. 

I think it looks better for it.

As always with our art, we Lab Rats are keen to incorporate some kind of cosmic space element in whenever we can, so I jumped at the chance to throw in some planets and stars in the area underneath Bens' lady! These always go down well with people and on one of the days down there, I had a number of people comment on the big planet and one lady even had to stroke it, thinking that it was some kind of material stuck on to the wall! haha! 

It was all coming together nicely toward the end of May and as the final payment was due to be paid into my bank, we were keen to get it finished. 

  Often when signing a piece, you wait until it's done and I think most people put it at the bottom, but over the years working on walls or boards that almost touch the floor, we've found it difficult to produce a decent logo having to crouch or even lie in awkward positions, so with this project we decided to put our logos up high and incorporate them into the piece.

(we are still working on a definitive logo for the Lab Rats, so went with our own individual logos this time)

My signature logo is Infected By Design hand drawn in dripping black ink and Lil' Ted is my copyrighted character logo I put and sell on clothing and often free art Friday drops.

  Ben was saying he doesn't have a definitive way that he writes He Dreamt Mars, but his signature motifs are the angels and planets that feature in his personal work and sometimes in paid projects. 

I'd left the brides' dress design until last as it had so much detail in it and I'm in my element doing that kind of thing! 

Overall the project has been fun, but hasn't always been plain sailing. The weather, snail trails, bird pooh, working to other peoples' designs and the boards slightly warping and coming off the wall, all came into play at some point and I think toward the end there was that feeling of just wanting to get finished. 

On the busy days down there with loads of students about, it was sometimes hard to just crack on with it, being asked many questions and not wanting to spray when people are stood next to you or looking over your shoulder, but the staff at the college have been most helpful.

 We were however supposed to have the varnish available to us on the last day, so we could coat and seal the finished design, but slight communication breakdown meant that we had to leave that up to the college to take care of after we left. 

I think everyone is happy with how the finished wall looks, Ben and I included, though as artists you always find ways to pick apart or criticise your work and with us still learning the ways of the spray paint, we can put ourselves down sometimes.

  Starting to take comfort in the fact however that we are getting more and more work based on what people have seen us do! 

Got to be better looking at this every day than a big brick wall! 

  The Lab Rats are currently working on some collaboration prints and we are looking forward to the triumphant return of Sand, Sea & Spray event this year on the 10th, 11th and 12th July in Blackpool town when we get to paint alongside our friends and local artists Catch22, Lowdown, Seca One and Moz, plus a smorgasbord of artists from all over the world. 

Hope to see you all there. 

 Big thanks again to Steve for organising this project, Barry Sullivan for tutoring the sessions with us and the college staff for all their help, plus Bobby Boulders for coming down and taking photos for us. 

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