My A'th Kar NQY - Phase Three, A Spanner In The Works!

So after our massive painting session, it was back to painting on the wall on my own. It's a pretty massive space to tackle by yourself, but it's nice to just crack on sometimes and plug your MP3 player in and blast out some music to help you work! It's also a way to avoid talking to the general public too when you have your headphones in! Now, i'm not saying i don't like the general public, it's just that they can hinder your progress by asking very stupid questions when you're working out in public!

The amount of people that came up to me while i was painting on the wall and asked me 'What you doing?' was unbelievable!

So, with the distractions of the daft general public foiled by the use of noise cancelling headphones, it was time to crack on and get the wall ready for yet another mass painting session. To get it to the right state, i needed to have all of the colour painted onto the wall, and 2 coats of it too. To help me with this tall order, i was lucky to have the help of another artist form Newquay called Chelsea. She had kindly volunteered to help out, so that she could gain some experience from working on a public art project on such a large scale.

For a couple of days, myself and Chelsea plodded on, colouring in the spaces and trying to stay within the lines! The day then arrived for the next painting session, everything was in place, and i was about to draw out the silhoutted figures for the arriving gang to paint.

We then encountered a slight hiccup in the project, that delayed us for a couple of days. Then everything got back on track and we managed to get the mural to what was almost a completed state, which can be seen in the photo below.

We've also been given another site to work on, at the local police station, which will be very interesting! I'm taking a little break from the project for some personal reasons, but will be back asap to crack on with a fantastic project!

My A'th Kar NQY - Phase Two, Painting By Numbers.

So Phase 2 of the mural involved a mass painting by numbers session with a larger group of youngsters to help me than i expected! The main core of the group that i'd been working with consisted of about 5-6 people, but i was expecting a few more to turn up...... but i wasn't prepared for nearly 20!

With every body wanting to help out with the painting, i had to co ordinate everyone to make sure they all had a brush, were all in a position to paint, and that they all had the right colour paint for their particular part of the wall! I managed to mix the desired colours correctly, and under immense pressure!

Directing this group of children, teenagers and artists was great fun, and i think everyone involved in this short painting session really enjoyed themselves! It got a bit hectic and very messy to some extent, but the amount and quality of creativity achieved in such a short space of time was fantastic!

The next group painting session was scheduled to take place a week later, but we encountered a small problem which will become apparent in the following Blogs!

So until then, here's another one of the press shots. All of the publicity has been co ordinated by the lovely Rhona Gardiner and Fiona Egglestone at Excess Energy in Newquay.

My A'th Kar NQY - Phase One

Ok, time to pick up the slack on the Blog! It's been a pretty full on couple of months regarding the My A'th Kar NQY project i've been working on, but Phase One of the mural painting part of the project has got underway. After a couple of photo opportunities with the local press (see cheesy photo above), I spent a good few days preparing the wall and white washing it, in readiness for drawing out the design.

Somehow, i've got to try and recreate the above design which was finally reached after weeks of workshops with the the group of youngsters. This was the initial design i came up with, which was passed by the local Council and Burger King.


Drawing out the design was very difficult, especially as the surface of the wall was made of brick! It was quite a large area, and took me a couple of days in total . It was made some what easier with the scaffold tower i was kindly lent by my mate Simon Taylor, who is one of the main organisers of The Masked Ball.

I think i must have gone through a least 20 pencils just sketching out the design, and then used a few marker pens to make sure it could be seen by the helpers who i was expecting to muck in and help me paint! I was looking forward to the help, as my wrist was feeling a bit knackered from the vibrations of drawing on a brick wall!

I had to improvise a bit too during the drawing process, due to the fact that i'd forgotten about the rather large Newquay Town Council notice board that is awkwardly positioned infront of the wall! I just had to jiggle things about a bit, in order for the composition of the mural to work.


So finally, with a very shaky wrist and a touch of snow blindness from staring at a white wall for so long, the design was up on the wall. Next up was Phase Two, which involved a painting by numbers session with a bigger group of youngsters than i expected!