My A'th Kar NQY / Harbour Wall Mural and Viral Advert.

So, next week i start the long process of beginning another massive mural for the My A'th Kar NQY project. We have been commissioned to recreate our ill fated Burger King mural on the bottom part of a wall in Newquay Harbour. Above is a proposal for what the whole wall could look like, if we get funding to carry it on higher.

At the moment, we can only paint up to a certain height, but hopefully we will be able to complete the whole thing including the viewing platforms right at the top. The MAKN trade mark silhouettes will be included in the final design, with them sitting down on the benches so that you can sit next to them or even on them! I was supposed to start preparation of the wall this week, but due to our amazing British summer, it has been rained off.

As a side line to the mural project, MAKN have now branched out into merchandise to help raise awareness for the project, and to help fund more wonderful creative projects like the public art work. I was asked to help the small group of young people who are responsible for this part of the project, to help them develop ideas for a Viral Advert which they hope will help promote their MAKN t-shirts which they have designed.

I spent yesterday morning at the Excess Energy office http://www.excess-energy.co.uk/ with this group, developing a storyboard for their advert, which they will then be producing with the IT department at their school. We had a very productive session, which will hopefully help them on their way to advertising their wares.

Hopefully the weather will hold out for next week, as we have yet another mammoth painting session planned! I should have it all white washed and ready to go by then, so that we can start painting in the sun! A big thank you to Rhona @ Excess Energy and Dawn Melville for yesterday's session.

My A'th Kar NQY, Police Station Mural.

Last week i completed the final mural for the My A'th Kar NQY public art project. This finished mural will soon be installed on the central tower of Newquay Police Station. Myself and Kasha, one of the guys from the MAKN group painted this mural on 8, 8' x 4' panels. We carried out the painting on the roof of Burger King in Newquay in the beautiful sunshine of Easter week! Here's a few photos that kind of show the progress of how the painting went from bare panels on Monday to the finished panels stored on the top floor of Burger King on Saturday!

My A'th Kar NQY Update.

So, since we last spoke, the My A'th Kar NQY mural project has taken a few twists and turns! As you can see from the photo of me above, the Burger King mural got a lovely new paint job but after some great campaigning by the local community and the media, BK has kindly offered the project £3000 to recreate the mural somewhere else in Newquay. So we're now on the look out for a suitable site to reproduce our mural again!

While we're looking for a new site for the BK mural, we've been hard at work on the mural for the old Newquay Bus Station site. We spent a week last half term painting 70 panels for the site, with the help of some very willing and able local volunteers.

We had a mammoth task on our hands, paint 70 panels in 5 days with gloss paint! My very good friend, Natalie Smith, took time out from here studying in London to lend an invaluable helping hand, and Sarah Pym from RIO (Real Ideas Organisation) cleared her schedule for the week to get stuck in with us on the creative battlefront!

Over the course of the 5 days, we had between 40 - 50 volunteers come along to participate in creating a very public piece of artwork to share with the community. Everybody who came along were very focused on the task at hand, but still managed to have a bit of fun and enjoy themselves in a very relaxed and friendly creative working environment!

I can safely say that this project was one of the most intense, but ultimately the most fun and rewarding project that i've worked on for a while! There was a lot of pressure to organise and finish the job on such a tight schedule, but everybody involved pulled together and worked tirelessly to get the job done!

Gloss paint is bugger to paint with, especially on such a scale as this, and working with younger people who are prone to getting paint all over themselves! We had to put a lot of measures in place to make sure that the kids weren't going home to their parents covered in gloss paint!

As the week progressed, the paint pile just kept on growing and growing! Mixing all the colours for the panels was great fun. We went through a few tins of red, blue, yellow and white paint in order to achieve the desired effect!

Logistically this was a nightmare too, as we had to keep moving panels in and out of the school hall we were using in order to make sure each one had been drawn on and had 2 coats applied to it! But with a bit of jiggery pokery, we managed this rather large balancing act with minimum hassle!

The project also proved to be a great way to pass on handy tips on painting techniques to some very budding young artists! Lets just hope we inspired a few of the next generation to follow in our creative footsteps.

A massive thank you to everyone who came along and did such a wonderful job of painting, and for donating their valuable time to this project. Thanks also to Natalie Smith, Sarah Pym, Rhona Gardener & Excess Energy, and David Chadwick. I'd like to extend a big thank you to David Jones and i-Site, the company who provided us with the panels, and who installed them at the bus station site for us.

The panels are now all up and in position, so get yourselves down to Newquay to have a little look. Eventually there will be a little trial to follow around Newquay to the various murals with have been, and will be completed. More details of this will be released shortly, so keep your eyes peeled!

My A'th Kar NQY - Second Mural Update.

I went to check out the site for the new My A'th Kar NQY mural on Wednesday, and as you can see from the photo above it's a pretty drab affair! The hoardings that have been erected are to cover up the old derelict bus station, and go all the way around ffom the public toilets to the derelict hotel at the back. There are 87 panels in total, and we're on a mission to paint them all in a week this half term!

Here's a few rough designs of what we're intending to paint on the hoardings. I've tried to keep it as simple and effective as possible, in order for the production of the panels to go as smoothly and as quickly as possible, while working with groups of young people who will be helping us with the process.

Hopefully we can still keep the message that the young people want to convey with this project, just by using the large text to spell out one of the phrases used in the first mural. I'm going to be using the silhouetted figures from the first mural, and the Police Station design too, keeping a theme running throughout the whole project.

I might use the figures as spaces between the words to break up the text, or just randomly insert them within the letters, not sure yet. Got a bit more drawing and designing to do before we actually start painting. Gotta get it right! What ever will appear on these hoardings, it's going to a whole lot brighter than what's already there!

My A'th Kar NQY - Second Mural

The My A'th Kar NQY Public Art Project will be entering into it's next phase in the next few weeks, with work on a second mural about to take place in Newquay town centre. We've just scored a major coup in our campaign to blast away all Newquay eyesores. We've managed to secure one of the towns most hated sites, the dirty and dragged down old bus station!

This site is in the process of having hoardings put up all around it, to try and cover up this derelict space. Our job is to now decorate these hoardings with a mural that follows on from the first mural. I've already started working on some preliminary sketches for the design which will incorporate text into it, like the previous mural.

There are a total of 87 panels to transform into a message from the young people of Newquay, about how they feel about the place that they live, and about how they would like visitors and tourists to treat the town. It's going to be a massive team effort from myself and the group of youngsters i've been working with, and also members of the general public who will be donating their time for free to help transform a depressingly derelict area of Newquay!

The idea is to try and create a bright and fun piece of public art, that will carry a message to the general public. At the moment we're looking for a large school or church hall to paint the panels in, which will be then transported to the sight and installed. If there's anyone out there that can help us with such a large space, then get in touch please!

At least on this mural, i won't be having to climb up and down scaffolding, or be outside painting in the snow! It's always nice to be able to creative inside in the warm!

Finally Finished A Massive Painting!

After many delays and hold ups, myself and Kasha Miller put the finishing touches to the My A'th Kar NQY mural in Newquay town centre last Friday! It's been a long old slog, with lots of obstacles being thrown in our way, but we finally finished!

Big thanks need to go out to my band of merry helpers who have braved the elements with me, to help produce this awesome piece of public art work! Drum roll please...... big love to Kasha Miller, Stevan Hyde, Becky Bryne, Andy Weir, Jourdan Brewer, Leigh Campion, Leanne Smale, David Britton and Chelsea.

We've had some late nights, some minor setbacks, and freezing conditions, but from the original idea of the project from the core group of youngsters (Kasha, Stevan, Becky, Jourdan and Spryo and Matt Casey who unfortunately didn't participate!) it's been a bit of a journey and mammoth effort to bring this mural to completion.

Safe to say, it has been very successful and extremely well received by the local people of Newquay. The amount of positive comments about the artwork and the message that it's originators wanted to say has been fantastic to say the least!

So many people have commented on how Newquay needs positive messages to lift it out of the general publics perception, that it is a destination for visitors with a lack of respect, and who don't drink responsibly. Everyone has said that they would like to see more of this kind of work to brighten up their home town, and to get a message across.

We have a new site at Newquay Police Station, which i have mentioned before, where we can hopefully carry on spreading a positive message about the town from the mouths of it's younger generation.

Myself and Tom Cowles from Excess Energy went to meet Sgt. Bob Murray yesterday to see which part of the station we have been allocated to decorate. It is a massive space, one that i hadn't anticipated, but it will look amazing once the decorated panels of artwork have been installed!

Me and the gang are going to be spending the next 2 weeks before Christmas getting as much painting done as possible, in order to get it up and into the public eye as soon as possible. It's an amazing opportunity for myself and the group to produce a piece of public art on a very unlikely building. How many other people do you know who have painted a Police Station without being nicked? I'll let you know how it goes, either from home or from a cell!