The Mural Artist Mural

Work is underway on the latest mural, called, appropriately enough; the mural artist.
Keri Ann van Doorne a.k.a Girl Friday, the foundation stone of Art School Waihi, is learning all about heights as she helps out on our mural.
We are painting a kid painting kid's art and we are climbing on a jungle gym to do it.
Are we serious?
Most definitely not dear reader. Life is short and fun is there to be had.
Promoting the beauty and joy of kid's art on large public murals is as serious as I will ever get.

Mother and Daughter drawings

Our model brought her daughter along to life drawing class last night, Samantha, who sat for me while the others drew her Mum.
I showed her how to draw tigers in her sketchbook first and then, when she didn't want to draw anymore, I did these wee portraits in Samantha's sketchbook.

Girl Friday, Winona and me

Magorly stressed out from the huge leap forward in dreams and visions of the future, the shock of the new changes and all the resulting mess and chaos around the home front and the almost total lack of funds I decide to chill out before I have some kind of physical breakdown.
The mental breakdown is a given, it's a 24/7 anxiety attack with occassional glimpses of sanity seen in the eyes of friends who bring me food parcels and puppy love...
So I decide fulfilling promises would be good for my soul and I ignore the pressing imperatives all around and finish the portrait of Winona that Winona's dad half paid for weeks ago and I wait for Girl Friday to come around before framing it so G F can have a lesson in framing materials and methods.
Girl Friday brings a camera and hey! there's me! ( I'm the one in the blue shirt, Winona's wearing a faded red T, Girl Friday is the one whose eyes you are looking through).
Tomorrow is Saturday and we have a party to go to, live music and all - fabulous!

Portraits of Children 2; Enter the Rat ! !

Soraya, Stardust and Winona

I can use this and two other photos to get the second portrait right. I was hoping to draw a finished portrait from life but that dream, like many another, ended up in the too hard basket.

Here I am on Easter Monday hard at work tuning up the portrait of Winona I began on Easter Saturday.
Soraya has grabbed my camera, Winona stole and hid my clip on sunnies and I must fondle a rat in a desperate attempt to coax a little girl to SIT STILL!!!
No way.
I count myself lucky I was able to coax Winona into sitting for a photo for the several seconds she begrudgingly favoured me with.

Portraits of Children

This is a work in progress, a commission to make a portrait of a friend's daughter, Winona, first sketch above, second sketch below.
I have not caught her yet, it's a good likeness but the magic isn't there. I've gotten familiar with Winona's features though.
Try again tomorrow morning. I want to get this from life and not use the camera at all but we will see what we will see. . . . It's a nice way to spend mornings over the Easter break anyway.

Ballpoint Pen Drawing

I went to visit my friend Graham and his seven year old daughter Soraya this evening and found myself having a cup of tea opposite Soraya's friend Haley and found a ballpoint pen and called for paper... here is the result.
Haley said "no offense but it looks a bit weird" after I gave it to her and I told her to give it to her Mother, that her Mum might like it.
I rolled it up and Soraya found a rubber band to hold it rolled up after Graham had scanned it and emailed it to me so you could see it too.
Ballpoint pen is very unforgiving, like watercolour there is no erasing or going back but I had fun anyway.
By the time I got around to drawing the food on the plate the bacon and egg was gone, Soraya wanted me to draw the tomatoe sauce but I told her it was too hard to draw tomatoe sauce and there were only a few chips left to draw so Graham drew a fish on a scrap of paper and Soraya drew an egg on a scrap of paper and I stuck them on with a lick, like stamps, so I guess it's a collage.
Was most fun I've had for a while and I wonder why I don't draw more than I do..

Waihi Rocket Park Mural is installed 3 Nov. 08

 
While John from the Hauraki District Council and I were up there on the cherry picker installing the 2 mural panels we cleaned off some crude tagging that some enterprising youngsters had sprayed on the rocket (yawn... ) I'd love to get hold of some of these creative infants and show them a few design skills so they could lift their game, and mana, and express themselves in a cooler and more inclusive way. ...dreams are free and as lovely as you want to make them...

The Weekly Portrait: Katika

 
This portrait was painted a few years ago and I have put it here because I have been too busy meeting deadlines to make a new one for you and the last time I drew a new portrait was last Friday. I got quite merry on the demon drink and did three excellent fresh and lively pen portraits of three friends of mine and gave them away on the spot so there you are...

The Rocket Park Mural comes home to Daddy

 
My community service is finito, yay! All my hours done and now I finish this job as a volunteer. So home from the local Marae comes the Rocket Park mural. And the two steel panels are set up in my bedroom as the studio is chocker with Marley's Mural in progress and both have a deadline of Oct 25 just 2 weeks away. I've also got a painting half done I am wanting to exhibit at the Waikino Spring Art exhibition, same time, same deadline. Challenging times and I have to tune out most of the people (with a few exceptions) and events around me in order to finish 4 seperate mural panels and one painting in 2 weeks. So the current stock market crisis can go to hell without me. I've got painting to do, lots of it..

Rocket Park Mural progress 23 9 08

The Rocket Park mural panels as I left them today, background finished and ladders finished, edges cleaned up.
The background and ladders have taken me an inordinate amount of time but now at last I can look forward to painting the children next Monday and Tuesday, the chairs and their supporting framework and the rocket control systems which are cunningly constructed from an old kid's bike and a piece of broken gym equipment.
We at Johnny Mulvay Murals and Space Technologies Corporation take our social obligations seriously and we are all, to a man, right into recycling and all that greenie stuff in general like going barefoot in the Summer months.
Somebody's gotta eh?
I mean, there are more than enough shallow materialists wandering the earth consuming and polluting and not buying my paintings(can you believe that? Shocking behaviour!) and keeping up with the Jones's and not knowing the simple delights of warm prickly gravel or cool soft grass underfoot. Poor things.

The Rocket Park Mural continues...

The mural as I left it on Tuesday afternoon. Much time was spent on getting the ladders and chair fixing brackets and background figures and elements just so and I will start to paint the children, six portraits, when I go back to work at the Marae next Monday....

Rocket Park Mural progress

Mondays and Tuesdays is community service at the Waihi Marae and this is what the Rocket Park mural panels looked like when I walked in today, Monday

The Rocket Park Mural begins

The two sheet steel panels that will be riveted onto the rocket at Waihi's Rocket Park playground to represent portholes on the rocket showing children within ready to take off for outer space are taking shape at last.
After much time waiting and, I thought for a while, waiting in vain, people in the local Council and the people in charge of my Community Service sentence have got together and agreed that an experienced mural artist painting a mural for a local children's playground as part of his sentence would be a good idea.
I have to say I agree. I first suggested the idea right at the start of my 150 hours community work sentence and be careful what you wish for 'cause all dreams come true....
I got taken off the chain gang and put to work at the local Marae which was O.K. but too easy and finally, with not many hours remaining on my sentence the mural project came through and the galvanized steel sheets were delivered to the Marae (I wasn't allowed to do the job at home in my studio) for me to cut to shape, clean, prime and paint the designs on.
This is how far I got as of today, the children drawn up and redrawn in Paynes Grey acrylic and the background mostly sketched in in washes of Paynes Grey.
Next Monday and Tuesday: Colour!! Yay!
The kids depicted are Daniel and Annabel from across the road, my Grandson Mateo, Tawhiri and Paige, two kids from the Marae and my young friend Amelie who blessed my studio at it's opening a year and a half ago when she was four by creating, at my request, the first original work of art therein.
I will be doing more hours on this mural than I owe and working harder, mentally, than I would on the chain gang but I still think it's a good idea. I am no stranger to doing art for free, 'specially in the early days of my mural painting phase, so it's no bother really.
My life as an artist has always been either a feast or a famine. This particular job is a feast of goodwill.

The Rocket Park Mural dies an ignominous death

At a meeting of local Ward Councilers this design idea of mine was chosen to enhance Waihi's Rocket Park, a job I was going to do for free as part of my Community Service sentence that a judge gave me for a drink driving conviction. Unfortunately the people in charge of supervising my sentence had me work out my time helping out at the local Marae instead.
They were kind and flexible enough to allow me to disappear for a while to organize for myself the painting of a mural for the local community as my community service but little old me caught between the Hauraki District Council and the Justice Department and with all the good will towards this idea it just, in the end, didn't fly.
All part of living the life of an artist dear reader...
I had intended the murals (one each side of the Rocket) to be based on photographs of children and to be a very realistic illusion but with the scale slightly enlarged and the tones in the painting exaggerated so the paintings worked for the viewer at a distance.
Looking forward to the challenge I was but there you go... heaps of other stuff to paint anyway.