Gilgamesh...

Im back at the adademy for 2 weeks painting Gilgamesh.
Its quite a nice wee show to do and I'm on my own so there a bit of freedom.
Theres not much to it, the centre piece is the ziggurat, a series of steps that have to be painted reddy orange with a few splashes of blue.

Then theres a gauze, same colour as the ziggurat.
Its realy hard to hang a gauze on your own, it take some serious arm strength and hammer balancing!!


Then there were the back flats which were to look like a night time sky, I had painted them originally with blues and blacks, with a white spatter. However once the designer seen them, she was keen for a little white to be added in with a little more ultramarine blue.

before...

after...

It was quite a nice wee show to come back to after Switzerland, not to tasking but still something to keep me busy with.

La vernissage (the opening night)

After two months of solid work, here it is...
I had an amazing time and am really glad I stayed for the two months instead of just one. I managed to see how the whole exhibiton came together and how each membewr of the team brought their own bit to it. The strangest thing was then seeing the public come in and wander round being able to touch your work rather than just view it as they would in a theatre.

the visitors were first brought inot this room with the reef , there were lots of shells on the floor to walk on as this would be the first sounds they hear...


each of the boxes with text was on springs, so anytime some stood on them, theywould make noise. this would stop again when the person came off the box, when you have a room full of people walking around, its soon got pretty loud...

the noises from the boxes were recorded by certain people, in the next room each of these tubes had informationon the people that collected these sounds. the infomation would only show up when someone walked in front of the tube as each one was rigged with a motion detector...

the vending machine room, where people could listen to different sounds, this is where most of the objects were also displayed, including the guitar fish...

These are some photos from my friend Seb (http://www.lrdprod.com/) aswell as the official MEN photographer (http://www.men.ch/)

More rust...

This time on my big submarine. This one had crashed into the sand and more of it is exposed so it has to look worn by all the water.

I primed the whole thing white, then put the blue on top, however when I got to the bottom part i added more water into the blue so it became more of a wash. I had to keep my painting quite up and down so it looked as if the submarine had scraped its way up the shore.

I found the rusty part shoed up better if I painted a little white patch on top of the blue where I knew I wanted to rust. I then took my raw sienna that I used for the other rust projects and painted it on quite washy, letting it drip down every so often.

Then same again as last time- iron powder, vinegar= rust.

to add a little more texture i took a chisel every so often and scraped into the blue paint to keep with the scratchy washed up texture...

Guitar fish and all that jazz..

One of the other spaces was to be like a storage container where all the object could be protected. There were various items loaded behind windows to resemble that of a vending machine.
This room was to look very different compared to the rest of the rusty submarine- a little classier.

I got to use Bristol bronze paint! I'd only ever used powders when painting metalics, so having it already made up was a bonus, especially when we didn't have a lot of time on our hands.
We had a reddish base coat and painted the bronze on top, then used water to sponge it off, giving a nice patchy texture.

super shiny floor, merci freaky swiss glaze...

In the middle of the room was a big sofa, that had been designed and made specially for the exhibition, this was sat in front of an aquarium type which was filled with various different shaped guitars that looked like fish.

my beautiful upholstering skills...

little fishies....

Making a reef

So our lovel rusty submarine, has crashed into a reef...

The carpenters built a frame and moudled some chicken wire, the lighting technician had his lights set up, we now had to add the fabric.

we dipped our fabric into pva, and moulded it to the shapes that were on the frame...

we had to use pegs to hold the fabric on as some curves were at quite deep angles and it didn't want to stay in place. i wanted to keep them on as it looked really pretty, but off they came...

DJ Rust in da house!

My nickname at the museum quickly became DJ Rust, as it seemed to be two things I spent most of my time doing. The exhibition was set on an old submarine so it had to look pretty worn out and rusty.

I hadn't actually used the old iron powder and vinegar method properly before, I can now say that I've had PLENTY practice!

First of all I used a burnt umber-ish base coat all over, then a raw sienna was over the whole thing kinda, messy in patches, it doesn't need to be too precious.
After that, I brushed on some glaze (I think some people use glue too), while this was wet I added my iron powder then sprayed it with the vinegar.
The colour of the rust depends on how much vinegar you put on, don't go nuts at first, it comes up pretty bright.


One recommendation though- WEAR GLOVES! I found out the hard way when I ended up with rusty hands!

submarine number 1. the whole of this is coated in iron powder, we went through quite a bit of the stuff...

rusty nipples...

Journey of a fresco (or fresque- since we're in Switzerland)

The main reason I was invited over to Switz was because they need someone to paint a fresque as part of the exhibiton.

The wall is 15m x 6m so we had to use 2 scaff towers to grid it up and mark it up.

Dont drop the string!!!!

The reference was of a desert but the scenographers wanted it to look like it was downloading so I there were lots of pixels to give this effect.

i first started out with the original photograph of the desert, this way I could cover the canvas and have a really good base...

next I began to add in the pixels.
i made up a square template from cardboard which measured 25x25cm. my boxes on my grid we 1x1m so the all I had to do was line up a corner of the templte to the corner of my.
for bigger gropus of pixels, I used masking tape...

the final stages were adding the black at the top. it made a HUGE difference once tis was added in and seemed to bring the whole thing together...

as a last minute idea, we thought it would be good if some of the pixels extended onto the other wall to give a feeling as if the image was coming together and the pixels were flying into place...

the final piece...

The entire thing took three weeks, with two people working on it for the first two weeks, then my self for the last week doing some final touches and finer details.

I think its the biggest thing I've worked on, on my own so it was challanging but I'm pleased with how it looks.

Switzerland

So, I've been in Switzerland for 2 months...

I was invited over by the lovely Anna Jones, who designed Kapsar Hauser at the academy last year. My stay was only suppose to be for 1 month but I in the end I stayed for 2, as there was shitloads of work to do, plus I was having an awesome time!
I was based in the French part Neuchatel, mais ma francaise n'est pas si bon! Its a really lovely part of the country that has its own lake, and amazing view of the alps!

the view from my terrace...

paper spider making masterclass...

We went to an amazing chalet for Anna's birthday too. Mountians, wine and fondue- what more do you need?


During the summer in Switzerland they run lots of different festivals. The first week I was I saw a street theatre festival called La plage de six pompes in La Chaux-de Fonds, quite near Neuchatel. We saw a crazy couple that did a performance in a caravan and who swallowed several object only to bring them back up again- delightful....

There was also a few acrobatic type performances, one that was a little like a trapeze with a couple fliping around in the air wearing 70s style disco costumes. Then there was a performance on a circular stage, where they used sound, dance and acrobatics that all seemed to based on this ciculat theme. They also had a guy perfoming with a cyr wheel- always a winner!

There was also the Buskers festival which was actully in Neuchatel itself, I saw this awesome band, Gadjo, from Barcelona play. Much dancing to be done when they are around! http://www.gadjomusica.com/