Grand opening today

Looking forward to the official opening of the new Oakwood school, and having another look at my (and everyone else's painting! Also I haven't seen the sculpture commission yet, pics later!

Piecing it all back together

I enjoyed watching this develop today as I stuck all of the panels together. There are some brilliant juxtapositions.

Episode Five

More paintings

A thoroughly enjoyable two days spent painting with the staff and pupils at Oakwood and we have very nearly got all the panels painted. A great range of aspirations today from 'swimming with dolphins' to 'being a princess' to 'being an astrophysicist' and a couple of budding scientists.

Getting ready

Second day of painting today, we got over 200 done yesterday so, well over half way there. Looking forward to see what everyone paints.

A selection of paintings

Here is a small selection of today's painting at the school. We had a great day painting our aspirations and achievements. I started the day wanting to be an artist but now I think I want to be an astronaut or maybe a rockstar/ spiderman all in one.

Cutting it!

Here it is the cutting up of the large oak leaf there are 285 panels in total. Tomorrow we get everyone else involved and start the group aspect of the project.

Tiny, Tiny Pieces

That took a while but only one little blister, I will show you the film if my computer ever let's me render it.

Cut to Ribbons

Vertical cuts, now for the horizontal ones, there is few more of them to do!

Over to the kids

Right that's it for my painting part. The next bit is me chopping this up into lots of pieces and getting all the kids (and grown ups) to do their painting then putting it all back together again.

Episode Three

A short installment and subtle but very important!

Episode Two

This is how I got there.

The State of Play Today

This is where we are today, 'but how did you get there?' I hear you ask, well wait for a bit and I'll show you, just finishing editing now.

Episode One

 

Here is the first instalment of a series of short films documenting the production of the painting.

Winning Drawings

Here are the ten runners up and the winner of the competition to draw the oak leaf that I have used in the final painting. A big thank you to everyone who drew an oak leaf I thoroughly enjoyed looking through them all.

Projected leaf

This is the original drawing projected onto the canvas, meaning I can accurately recreate the line from the drawing. I have filmed what happens next (am editing now will be on here later on) ....

First layer, shocking pink!

The first, slightly alarmingly pink, layer of paint goes down. And there are my overalls!

Studio ready

I love to see in other artists studios so I hope you like having a peek into my temporary studio. The large panel will be the oak leaf and the left hand panel will be worked up in the same way as the big one and is for spares in case I need any extra bits. There are also some canvas scraps for testing paint and texture on as I go. The projector is all set up with the drawing ready to be painted up. Pink undercoat first, it will look shocking but all will become clear at the end!

Priming

It is good to get started, I am priming the big canvas that will ultimately get cut up into 300 pieces. For the time being I am concentrating on getting it nice and white ready for the colour.

Materials

Ooooo materials for the large painting arrived today. V v v v exciting!

Sketch

This a painting on canvas to help me start to work out the final colours and texture and the order I need to apply the layers of paint. This has lovely reds but not enough deep bluey purpley. More fun with colour tomorrow.

Swatches

What great colours, and the wall that painting is going to be hung on will be red too. I really enjoy painting red paintings especially if there is orange and purple in there too. Can't wait!

Digital Sketch

This is a sketch done on my iPod to have a look at some colours together, based on some lovely swatches I got last week.

Oakwood, Oak Leaf Drawing

I am very,very,very excited to open this little blog with this drawing. I have chosen this one out of 200 drawings by the pupils at Oakwood to be the inspiration and starting point for a huge group painting I am making with the staff and pupils at Oakwood primary school for their new school in Cheltenham. I will now make this into a 2 metre by 1 metre painting. Then I will cut it up into 300 pieces for everyone to add their paintings before I put it all back together to reveal the huge oak leaf again.