Incidentally, I never got to go to the studio after my last post, so instead I got my friend Andrew to email his pictures to me. These were all taken by him over the past couple of weeks, as the images developed.
We have been trying to get this mural finished, as the clients have been patiently waiting to have this one (and several others) up on the walls. It has been taking a while, but circumstances have prevented us from getting into it sooner - mostly work, studies, transport, people leaving the project, etc. etc.
The mural is to be installed in/on the Boolarra Memorial Hall. The title is "History Train", and it represents a cross-section of the past century or so, with soldiers returning from various wars in which Australian troops had involvement (from the Boer War to the present day). Since Boolarra was on a train line at one point, we used the train as both a symbol of homecoming, and a visual reminder of the town's history.
This is one of a series of murals that we have painted for the township. There are several more, some of which have already been installed (and which I will include later). Click on the images to make them bigger, or, better yet, right-click and open in a new window or tab.
This is how the mural looked as of late May 2008. It covers five panels, each approx. 90cmx180cm. The panels we use as a base are the same type used in building houses, similar to plasterboard. We paint on panels instead of directly onto the wall because this way we don't have to work on-site, and the clients can install and relocate the murals as they see fit. NB. This was taken after most of the work shown below.
This shows how far the mural had progressed. Okay, so most of the stuff had been painted in already, but if you look closely you'll see that the guy in the front-centre, and the man standing to the right of him, are a tad "impressionistic". Well, let's be blunt, they're NOT FINISHED.
So, compare this picture...
...to this one, taken a day later. Andrew has managed to give him some more recognisable features. Incidentally, his model for the face and ears was Yours Truly, who kept getting annoyed at the repeated requests to "hold your head still". I made him bring some picture books on anatomy the next time!
More progress. We've altered the face again, because we realised that his head was out of proportion to the rest of his body (you can't tell because of the way the image is cropped, but he looked like a big fat giant compared to the people around him). The fellow standing next to him now has a face, and doesn't he seem pleased about it?
You'll probably notice that these three fellows have also received a face-lift since the first picture was taken above.
More of the crowd. A lot of the faces and figures needed retouching and adjusting - some of them were, shall we say, "a good start". That's my arm working on the faces. Compare these people to...
...this group, and you'll see what I mean.
Now, I don't want to create the impression that what was there before was "wrong". It was fine, it just needed further development - like a rough draft, compared to the final work. It's actually really, really hard to get a painting to look like the source image. I felt bad that the original artists were unable to finish it, so I made sure that their work was finished off nicely.
This couple were mostly finished, but there were some technical problems - namely, neither of them had a face. So, we fixed that.
More faces and details that needed rendering are shown here, fixed. Some of these appear in unfinished form in the 2nd picture above.
Most of this was Andrew's work. He thinks that he has make the blonde person in the centre look almost like John Lennon in profile. Do you agree?
We will give you more photos after the next time I get out there (hopefully Tuesday). In the meantime, here is one more photo that Andrew took of me while mucking around with his camera. He held the shutter open while he slowly got closer to me, and this was the "interesting" result...
Seriously, WHAAA? It makes me look like I've got weird facial hair, and a bald spot you could crack eggs on! It makes me look like... not... me.
Anyhoo, thanks again to Andrew for taking the pix. There will be more to come!
4 comments:
Cool. Thanks for sharing.
It's fun to see the progress shots too.
You look soooooooo weird in the photo. It's like some alien technology is in the process of messing with your molecules.
The murals are awesome! I like when history is put into art. It's more accessible to me that way. Have you done in history murals concerning the aboriginal peoples' history in Australia? I really want to learn more about them. It seems their tale is as sad and complicated as that of our aboriginal peoples here in the USA.
PS: You look like a creepy holographic ghost in that picture!
Thanks Loretta!
We haven't done any specifically-indigenous themed murals yet, mostly because the content largely depends on who commissioned the work.
However, Trish (the art director) recently discovered that as many as 70% of the people from Australia who fought in WW2 were aborigines, so we're trying to incorporate something relating to that in the train mural.
And yes, you are right in thinking our native population is having similar (if not worse) problems to those in the US. What else would you expect from a former white settlement?
PS. You should have seen how the other guys turned out!
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