Achievement Unlocked: Mural Installed

Oh, just in case you thought the blog was just a bunch of boring travelogues and pretty pictures, here's... um... a bunch of pretty pictures!

I've been meaning to post this for a while; way back when I started the blog, I mentioned that I was helping finish off a couple of murals started by the mural painting group I used to work for. Well, one of the murals found an installation site (after the original site was no longer available) and is now ready for the world to see!

Okay, so it's not perfectly flat, in fact they had to fold it over the corner of a building to make it fit. But hey, everybody's doing 3D these days, why not a mural?
And there's a tree in the way, but it's not completely obstructed...
And there's a fence around it too... and hardly anyone goes around that side of the building -

Oh, never mind. It's UP, it's FINISHED, and it LOOKS GREAT dammit!

This mural, if you remember, was the one commissioned by the local Lions Club, to illustrate the history of the Moe-Newborough region. It's meant to look like a big wall full of historical photographs and memorabilia. (On one of the panels, you can actually see a picture of people looking at the actual wall!)



Depicted in front of the photo wall are a number of antique items, such as oil-burning lamps, clocks, photo frames and radios.



The images depict various parts of the region's history and important local landmarks, many of which no longer exist. There are also antique portraits and vintage advertisements among the displayed items.



The mural also pays tribute to the many social clubs and community groups who have lent aid to the region over the years.



The mural went through many changes and alterations during its creation, including the addition of an extra panel on one end! It was originally to be installed at a totally different site, but the deal fell through, and the mural's fate was in limbo until the current site owner agreed to accept it for permanent display.

Oh, if you want to see it in person, it's located within the Gippsland Heritage Park (formerly Old Gippstown), on the westermost point of Moe, Victoria. Oddly enough, the heritage park is itself represented in the mural; the Gippsland Motor Garage shown in the picture above can also be found inside the park!

To view the rest of the album, click here, and enjoy!

I need to get out more...

Hey constant readers! yeah, both of you

I finally went and collected the painting I bought last month, after about a week of missing contacts and plain forgetfulness. I'll post an image of the artwork once I get permission from the artist - copyright and IP protection, and all that. ;)

While I was there paying for art, we got to talking about how things have been for ourselves. My artist friend has been very busy trying to scratch together enough works of art for her art course and for another showing she's been signed up for... It's so damn hard to come up with good ideas for art, and doubly so when your under the pressure of a deadline. I wish her all the best.

But it also made me realise why I've been so unhappy with my output lately. I have been working quite a bit for the past few months, as my family and friends are sure to point out if you ask them. The problem is, work is ALL that I've been doing.

If you were to ask me how I've been, or what I've been doing, I'd probably say, "Oh, I've been busy working". But if you asked me what else I'd been up to, I'd probably draw a blank. And that is not good.

I think the problem lies in that I can only really focus on one particular project at a time. Multitasking seems totally beyond my powers. I can do it, but only if the tasks are related and I'm not literally doing them at the same time.
When I first started my job in retail, I was also doing a course of WFTD painting murals (a slightly different arrangement from the one I've been talking about earlier in the blog). And what I discovered was that it was a freaking nightmare.

Imagine doing something like painting, which is like meditation in a way - you are focused solely on the task before you, in a quiet and distraction-free environment (or at least it ought to be). Now, imagine that you have to step out of this environment, and suddenly find yourself in a chaotic, multi-directional place like, say, behind the register of a service station. At any given moment, you could find yourself worrying about four or five different tasks, and each of them could be interrupted by something else.

It's a bit like participating in a triathlon, or that sport where you have to do some cross-country skiing and then try to shoot at a target with a rifle. Oh, that's a biathlon, apparently. I was close.

After a few months of trying to keep all the threads together (and learn a new job in the process), I eventually decided to stick with just the retail thing since it was the part that was actually paying me. I hated giving up on the art stuff, but at that point my job was too important to screw up, since I hated being unemployed.
Since then, I've done some painting stuff in the meantime, but only the parts for the mural that I've already described in this blog and that was only incidental; I originally only went to the studio for a social visit and got roped in to helping out - damn, she's persuasive. Aside from that, not much else has happened with my art.

And that's the problem.
By investing my time mostly with work, I've been neglecting all the other stuff that makes live endurable. I've become slack in my free time, and instead of visiting friends, doing fun things and generally having a life, I spend my days off mucking around at home, and sleeping.

I think I need to alter my priorities a little. Just a bit.

Of course, the other thing is that my employers have recently altered my working situation. I am now working a guaranteed five days a week, ensuring I have 30~ hours spread over two sites, with casual rates. Everyone who's heard about this seems to be happy for me. But. I'm not entirely sure I think this is good news.

I don't know why I'm reluctant about this, since it's mostly work that I'm familiar with, and there are a lot of people who would really enjoy being in a position like mine. I know for sure that the job environment is not going to be any better anywhere else.

I think my problem is that I'm treating this job as an end in itself, when it really ought to be the means. After all, who of us can say that their job is their entire life and say that they are happy with it?
I need to make sure that I'm doing all of this for a reason, and not just a self-contained one (ie. I'm doing it because they need me to). I need to remember that all this money I'm earning doesn't just have to go to the bills and food and stuff. I need to remember that I do have other skills than knowing how to give correct change, and which brand of beans is canned or frozen.

Put simply, I need to get out more.

At any rate, this is something I need to work on (no pun intended). I need to organise something with my friends before the end of the month, so that ought to be a good starting point.

Stay tuned.

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).

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"...

Ludicrous Portraits of Me

Here are a couple more pictures of me that I found while seeking out mural photos.

The first is of me dressed in the Super Mario costume I mentioned earlier. Sorry it's not full length, but I didn't find any that were of just me (because I won't put other people's faces on this without permission, especially in fancy dress).
I wore the Super Mario costume for Ella's 30th Birthday "Fancy Dress" party. Ella thought having a costume party for her birthday would be a fun idea, and who doesn't like getting dressed up for a bit of fun?
Ma made the costumes for us again, because she rocks at making them. She also made Krissy's Rainbow Brite costume (she could have chosen between RB or The Little Mermaid; I guess she didn't fancy wearing seashells). There were a lot of really good costumes worn by the partygoers, and everyone had fun. Ma and Ray went as Morticia and Gomez Addams, and the Birthday Girl went as Tinkerbell!

This second photo is a little party trick I did to improve the mood at the studio. It freaked Trish out all the time! Imagine me making chomping motions while doing this, and you can probably understand why...

And these don't really belong in this section Ha! me pretending there's logic and order to all of this, but this is what we did with all the expired paint trays at the studio. We were very good at recycling - rather than just go out and pay for a bunch of brand-new paint palettes, we scrounged around for plastic packaging inserts, like those in a chocolate box or Easter Egg display. These did the job as well as any purpose-made palette. Not bad for garbage!
However, once the trays had been used for painting, Trish couldn't bear to throw them away. Most of them had dried out into interesting patterns, creating works of "accidental" art. But she needed to use them for something, and by coincidence she also needed something to help control noise in the "facilities", so she came up with the idea of using the trays as a primitive sort of sound proofing (like those acoustic tiles used in sound studios).

Okay, so it didn't really make much difference in reducing the sound from inside, but once we'd put them all over the ceiling and walls, it did look very nice in there. Especially all the stuff sitting upside down on the ceiling! (Don't worry - I just used a Hot Glue gun to stick the majority of these onto the walls, so they come off really easily.)

If you haven't seen the other three posts below this one, check 'em out now. Next time, I'll tell you about some of the other games I've been working on! Seeyas!

Lions Mural

This is the second set of "New/Old" photos of murals taken last year, only these aren't for Boolarra, but for Moe! I wasn't working with Over the Walls at the time this commenced, but I understand that it was commissioned by the local chapter of the Lions community club for display in the CBD of Moe.

My involvement with this one is a little complicated. I had been away from the studio for quite some time while this had begun, and I only showed up to pay my friends a visit - but somehow, I got talked into painting "just a little bit" of the mural to help out. Well, that little bit turned into "a little bit more", then "quite a bit more", until eventually I was helping out with a few friends the day before delivery of the mural, frantically putting in details at the last minute!

This first photo shows how the finalised mural looked when we left it. It is meant to resemble a wall covered with various historical artefacts and images of the Moe-Newborough area, dating back through the past century.



You'll see in the bottom left corner a small white rectangle; this is a list of all the people who worked on the mural. Even though I was only a ring-in, I still managed to get listed!

These three pictures are details of some of the pictures I painted. The first is a copy of the old Shire of Moe building (which is now owned by Federation Health).
The second is of the Sunicrust bakery, one of the local businesses to have provided employment to residents for many years (my Dad included). Yes, I know the car looks dodgy. I don't do cars very well.





I only painted part of the third image (of workers tending to the railway line at the start of the century), but I've included it to see if anyone spots the mistake.

This image shows Krys and myself painting on the mural in the wee hours of the night, the day before it was due. Man, that was a loooong night... and an even longer morning afterwards. (thanks, Krys, thanks Andrew!)


And the worst part of all this? Despite all that work we put in at the last minute, the artwork wasn't collected. Instead, three new panels were added to it for the next round of artists to work on!
[sigh...]
(And yes, I did actually wind up doing more work on this one - more pix to come!)

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!