The crew at Blankwalls recently held a group show at their newly opened Blankwalls Studio in Perth.
Blankwalls has built an enviable reputation across the globe as world class stable of street/mural talent, so I was happy to be included in an impressive lineup of artists from all over the globe to showcase some of my work.
I managed to get 5 pieces into this show , they were; Dawn, Outer orbit, Explore feel, Inner Landscapes and The new machine.
Well, this was unexpected!
This year I really wanted to get back into exhibiting some work and had a few pieces in progress, two in particular that stood out as possible entries in the Rockingham Art Prize.
As the entry deadline approached the smaller piece was picked up by a collector so I had no choice but to push a larger piece ‘The New Machine’ to completion.
After putting the final touches on this one it was photographed and submitted. I waited knowing that this show attracted a large amount of submissions. They in fact received over 460 submissions and I was lucky enough to be amongst around 60 artists selected for exhibition. I was extremely happy to be selected.
Seeing my work in a local gallery was fantastic and the opening night and awards were an even bigger highlight for this year.
This 1 x 1 meter artwork is a statement about where we are going as our digital world slowly surrounds us and eventually we become a part of it an it becomes part of us. The central human has taken on a new face the human has become the new machine.
I had the pleasure of exhibiting in a rare 2020 group exhibition held at the Corner Gallery just after WA Covid restrictions were relaxed. It was a chance to introduce my work to Perth in a small way after not exhibiting in my home city for so long.
The bonus was exhibiting alongside some of Perth’s established and emerging artists.
I exhibited three original pieces.
All three pieces were sold during the exhibition. You can see them on my Original Art page.
Massive thankyou to my new collectors that picked up one of these pieces and also to Alex and The Corner gallery.
I’m an absolute beginner when it comes to large scale artwork, but for a while now I’ve been wanting to take my work to a wall somewhere. Taking an idea that started in your head, sketching it then scaling it up to a large wall mural is a real test of an artists abilities and a great way to push yourself out of your comfort zone. Luckily for me the good people at The Corner Gallery had just the right wall for me facing busy Hay street in Subiaco.
My first step was to figure out what I was going to paint. I decided pretty early on that my Musician artwork would be ideal, I just felt it would be perfect for the almost square area I had to work on.
Scaling up was the next challenge, there are 3 ways to do this
1. Old school grid
2. Projection tracing
3. Scribble method (check out a vid by Rhone )
Each method has it’s merits but at this size 2.6 x 2.6m I selected the old school grid system and based everything on 30x30cm grid squares. To speed up the grid drawing I cut out a 30x30cm sheet of thick card and used this as a template for marking. Below I’ve added my reference image that I used with grid overlay.
Next step was getting my colors and gear ready
It was time to draw my grid and get painting, Day one I got my grid up, linework done and all the main blocked in colours. Day 2 I was crossing my fingers I could complete all the fine details but I fell short by perhaps an hour or two. I came back later to clean up some mistakes and stencil in my mark.
All up this was an awesome opportunity and I’m now hungry for the next wall, I did make some mistakes and would maybe do one or two things slightly differently and maybe a bit more practice on the cans would be good but I’m happy with the final wall.
DoodlesinTransit 