street art – DoodlesinTransit

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.

The Before shot – with a weathered piece by Daekx

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.

‘The Musician’ a piece I had just finished

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

This was going to be a bright piece dominated by that aqua colour.

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.

The Full Video – Start to finish!

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.

There are little parts of every city that get forgotten, a broken window, a lifeless grey wall. They are the dark corners and run-down alleyways that beg for new life or a splash of colour.

There’s a building I pass by often, a slightly awkward building perched on a busy road in West Leederville that has this damaged, rusty vent. Metal slats are missing leaving a big dark space (it actually opens up into the building basement) I’ve been weirdly obsessed by it.

Street corner in West Leederville begging for colour — Some see an eyesore, I see opportunity

It’s that dark void I’m interested in, at first I thought it looked like the building had one closed and one open eye. Wouldn’t it look cool to paint that? But then I thought it might be possible to create some art that occupies that dark void, perhaps I could use that negative space to tell the story of that aged wall. It clearly needed one of my tormentor characters.

Say hello to Frank, I wanted Frank to be chomping down on that busted metal frame like he was standing in the basement holding onto the frame and watching the cars zipping past. I’m pretty satisfied by the result.

Check out my process and the final install here

UPDATE: Frank managed to win a Creative Project award from one of Perth’s Mayor candidates. I’m too lazy to dig up the details but you can take my work for it 🙂

Tag: street art

The Corner Gallery wall

Street art in negative spaces