Mural News

The other piece of news I have is that Trish has finished the Train Mural that I've helped paint previously. I haven't been able to go visit her studio since this post (and that time I was beyond anything resembling helpfulness).
The commissioners of the murals have been complaining about the absence of finished work, so Trish has had to complete them on her own.
:( Sorry Trish.
If I'd had a reliable work schedule, I would have been able to sort something out, but... things are still crazy right now. (We're training up a couple of new people at the moment, though, so things should improve!)

Oh the up side, this means that we only have the Lions mural, and a couple of the single-panel works, to complete... and all of the old projects will finally be finished!
*insert premature applause & fanfare*

This will clear up a lot of space in the art studio. But most importantly, she can now accept tenders for new projects, for which she will actually get $income$!
NB. She did get paid for the previous ones, but only at the beginning... which, remember was a few years and several rounds of "Work for the Dole" ago. That funding is now long gone.

With any luck, I'll be able to organise a mass visit to her place, with some of the other volunteers that I'm in the process of tracking down. Hopefully, we'll be able to have a get together by Christmas - or for Christmas, if everything opens up sufficiently before then!

Murals, Street View of

I wish I could show you photos of the "finally finished" murals that I've spent most of this blog rabbiting on about, but unfortunately, getting my Mural group together has been a logistics nightmare. How difficult can it be to organise three people?! Well, very difficult, apparently. (To T. and &., I'm sorry. I know you both are really busy too, but I'll try to get us all together again somehow.)

Anyway, I can't show you any new mural photos... or can I?

You may have heard all the hoopla about Google Maps' Street View application invading people's privacy, and all that whatnot, but thanks to this innovative program, I can show you exactly how the murals look!
Go to the Australian Street View site, and type in this address: 7 Christian Street, Boolarra, Victoria, Australia 3870. Or, try this link. Your PC needs to be reasonably high-powered in order to use this site; it just barely works on mine.
This now solves my earlier question of whether the Title/Stump Mural has been installed yet (it has). And you can clearly see where the Lest We Forget mural has wound up.
You can rotate the camera in any direction, and move along the road to get a better view of the murals. You can zoom in for a closer look of the murals if you like, though I personally think that you find better pictures right here!

Also, see if you can spot all of the murals that were installed on Rutherglen Road in Newborough, postcode 3825... There used to be more of them, but some have been removed (or have fallen off - whoops).

Presenting Dinkycam!

Just when you thought these photos couldn't get any worse...

A couple of years ago, my older sister bought me a digital camera for Christmas.
"Lucky you!" you might well say, but...
Let's just say, um, that the camera doesn't quite do what it promises.

For a start, it's very small.
It's dimensions are 6cm wide, 4cm tall, and 1½cm thick.
It has a keyring loop on it. As in, keep it on a loop with your keys...?
It runs on a single AAA alkaline battery. If the battery runs flat, or if it falls out, all the pictures are deleted.
It has no flash. If the image you are trying to take is too dark, it won't take it.
It has no preview screen, just a little window that slides up from the top to give you an (approximate) view through the lens.
It does, however, come with a CD-Rom with all the stuff you need to get it to work, and it does come with a USB cable.

EDIT: Here's a nice decent visible picture of it, if that description didn't do it for you:

So far, I have had it for about two years, and I have never been able to get it to work.
Until this week.

I took it along with me to the fateful non-working working bee at the art studio last Thursday, and took some photos of the murals (in case I didn't get any from Andrew, but it turned out that I did after all).
Because the camera is only a budget model (ha!) I had no way of knowing how the photos would turn out until I got it home and uploaded them. When I did, this is what popped out:

Thrilling, huh?

But wait, there's more! I decided to take some photos of our new refrigerator and compared it with our our old one. Have a look!


I was a tad disappointed with the camera at first, especially since this is supposed to be the HIGH RESOLUTION setting. And no, I haven't reduced the size of the pictures in order to upload them - that's what it spits out. 352 x 288 pixels to be precise.
Okay, so it's not the best camera. But then I realised, "Hey! So what? You can still recognise what the subjects are, um, almost..." And besides, it's not as if I have a better digital camera lying around the house!
So I've decided to keep on using it, and to take pictures of things I otherwise wouldn't be able to.

I have christened it... Dinkycam.
Keep your eyes open for more photos, folks!
and NB. I will NOT be uploading pornographic images of myself.

Yet More Mural Photos

Okay, so I didn't get a chance to actually paint anything last Thursday (that's what I would have done if I hadn't fallen ill), but I did manage to get more photos of the murals!

Once again, all images are courtesy of Andrew. I managed to get copies of the images directly from his PC, because attaching them to emails would have taken him about half an hour (even on broadband). I'd forgotten to bring a USB Flash drive for this purpose, but luckily my MP3 player also doubled as a data storage device! Ain't technology wonderful?

This first image shows how far we got with the History train mural the last time we were there. Trish had moved the panels to the downstairs gallery so we could work upright, and reach all the areas of the artwork.
(That's Trish standing in front of the mural in the second picture.)

We only did a little bit of work that time, but I managed to get all the nameplates on the carriages done (the little bronze-ish rectangles above each of the doors). Each plate lists one of the wars that Australians fought in, ranging from the Boer to the Gulf Wars.

There are other changes than that, though - among them, you'll find that Mr Big Blue Coat Guy has changed again, this time he's green and he has legs now:


Also, I managed to get a photo of the three new panels of the Lions mural.

I've painted about four sections on this new part, but the rest was painted by the WFTD participants and, of course, the people I'm currently painting with.

I've taken more, but you'll have to see those under "Dinkycam"...

Train Mural, Previously

We haven't been able to work on the murals for the past couple of weeks, due to conflicting engagements (I've been working most of this week, for one). I wanted to put up some of the painting we did last time, but sadly, we haven't taken any new photos since the last.
But! I remembered that I did see some other photos of murals that I'd helped paint, and after a little search, I came up with - Ta Da! More Mural Photos! Except these aren't "New" as much as they are "Old", because these actually date from some time last year, not some time last month!

First, an image of the History Train mural, as it was just before the Over The Walls studio relocated. I believe these date from mid-2007, but I'll have to check with the other participants to be sure.

This image really illustrates the big difference in the figures on the first and fourth panels from the left. But the most notable change is the colour of the train. In these images, you can still see the blue underpainting that was used as a tone guide. This layer helps to preserve the light and dark areas of the mural as the top layer of colour fades over time. I understand that the life expectancy of a mural like this one is at least ten years (depending on the quality of the paint job, of course).

Also, another (clearer) photo of the name-plate mural that was shown in a previous post.

Thanks again to Andrew for taking these images, and those of the Lions Mural. You can definitely see a difference when you use a digital camera over an older film type. Mayhaps I will be getting one for myself, soon...?

NB. I had to upload this batch of images twice, because after the first attempt I realised I'd forgotten to add the copyright notice. Whoops!

More "Lest We Forget"

Okay, I meant to put these with the other mural posts, but I forgot that I had them. These are close-ups of the letters of "Lest We Forget" from the first installed mural for Boolarra. Click on any of the images to view the larger version. You can zoom in on the images in the Picasa viewer to see the finer detail.

L= Lone Soldier · E= Boer War
S= World War I · T= World War II


W= Women's wartime contribution · E= World War II (?)



F= Flight/Aviation · O= Korean War · R= Returning Soldiers
G= Vietnam War · E= Vietnam War · T= Gulf War/Present day

I painted the first T, the W, and parts of the last E.
Apologies for the poor quality of some of these images (eg. flash bounceback) but they were taken with a pre-digital camera, and we didn't have the luxury of seeing how the pictures turned out before we developed them.
If you are the artist of any of these, and want credit for your work, please post a comment or contact me otherwise.

More Murals

Here's some more pictures of the murals from the same project. All of these are for Boolarra as well, and some of them have already been finished and installed. There's still a couple of other single-panel images that need finishing, and I'll include those later.

This was the first mural to go up on the wall. I've included a copy of the local newspaper article written after the presentation ceremony.
Each letter of the words "Lest We Forget" contains images related to different periods in Australian military history. For instance, the S is based on WWI, the G is from the Vietnam War, the W is dedicated to the contribution of women in wartime, etc.

This piece was intended to replace the existing nameplate on the Boolarra Memorial Hall. I don't know if it actually has been installed in that place, but I will find out the next time I go out that way.
It's a scene reminiscent of the bushland around the town, featuring some of the local vegetation and fauna. The tree stump in the foreground continues the Army Memorial theme.

And these are some of the single-panel works. This one illustrates Boolarra's history in dairy farming, an industry typical of most of Gippsland. Dairy cattle are a common sight around the valley; this panel shows what a dairy farm of the region might have looked like in the past.

This panel depicts the local logging industry. Boolarra is set in deep bushland, and for most of last century they had a thriving timber trade, and this panel illustrates what what it might have looked like in the late 1800s.

This was based on a photograph of a local who went to war early last century - I turned it into a rough composite figure, an "everyman" meant to represent all those who served in the armed forces.



Note: These paintings were the work of several people, NOT just myself. I only painted the Lone Soldier, portions of Lest We Forget and (teeny tiny parts) of the Memorial hall sign.
If any of the other artists are reading this, and want credit for their work, please write a comment or send me an email. The same applies for any of the artists who want photos of the stuff they painted.

There are more single-panel murals, and of course the Train Mural, which we will complete over the next few months (depending on our availability). More pix will come!

The Train Mural

And now, the promised mural images!

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!