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!)
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.