Paintin' in the Rain

For the past couple of weeks I've been painting a mural on a playground fence at a school in Pimlico.

I use the term "painting" loosely - it's actually more "battling with the elements". As usual whenever I'm commissioned to paint a mural outside, it has rained continuously. Over the course of ten days, only two have been sunny. The rest of the time I've been dodging cloudbursts, and, on one particularly memorable afternoon, thunder and lightning. When I set out to be an artist, I never considered it to be a particularly dangerous career.

This is a slightly unusual and interesting commission for me. The school have asked me to reproduce 20 paintings by a group of Year 6 pupils which all depict the London skyline, scaling up from the A5 size paintings onto wooden boards approx 2m x 1m.

Every one of the 20 paintings is in a completely different style, and the challenge for me is to try and copy someone else's work yet at the same time create an overall uniform look to the mural.

Inbetween rainfalls I have managed to add some paint to about half the wooden panels in the playground fence. Here's some photos at halfway stage.

I suggest listening to this while you browse (it's what I was humming to myself while I was painting in the rain):

Some of the paintings by Year 6.

Deciding on the line-up.

Day One. The wooden panels ready for painting.

Drawing a design onto a panel.

Starting with the background colour. As the sky is a completely different colour in every painting, we decideded to choose one blue colour for the entire mural.

Day Two. Rained off...

Back to work - attempting to reproduce an A5 watercolour painting, with acrylic on a large wooden board.

BT Storytellers - Basketball test event

Back in August (Ahh yes, I vaguely remember sunshine...) in my capacity as a BT Storyteller I was lucky enough to attend one of the test events at the 2012 Olympic Park in Stratford, not far from where I live in Walthamstow, east London. I had tickets to watch an evening of matches at the basketball arena, including Team GB v France, and I was asked to produce a piece of artwork inspired by the event.

Well, a mere three months later and I've finally got around to completing my painting and uploading photographs of the work-in-progress, which you can view below.

I've tried to convey the shapes, colours and movement of the athletes, and the contrast between the tangle of limbs and the straight lines in the structure of the arena. I like the way the ball appears to hover in mid-air, almost like a full moon suspended in a night sky.

Starting point. A pencil drawing on paper, my trusty watercolour set (which I've had since art school days), and a selection of brushes. I find this stage absolutely terrifying.

How will it turn out...

Starting the background colours first. I used paper which is fairly thick, but not proper watercolour paper, as I wanted the paper to curl slightly when wet - I find this results in interesting patterns in the paint instead of a uniformly flat finish, which is the effect I wanted for the background here.

When using watercolours, it's important to allow each section to dry before applying a new colour next to it, otherwise the paints will bleed into each other (unless this is the effect you're after). I'm incredibly impatient though, which is why I use acrylics for my mural paintings - they dry very quickly.

It was at this stage, nearing the end of the painting, that I realised I'd painted the orange background over the net - which should have been white. And I have no white watercolour paint (traditionally with watercolours, for any white areas you simply leave the white of the paper to show through.)

So I cheated and used some white acrylic paint. Sshhh, no-one will ever know...

Photograph of final painting.

Scan of final painting.

Me outside the basketball arena at the 2012 Olympic Park.

It's a jungle out there

And so the jungle mural at Grafton Junior School is complete. I've had such a great time at the school. The kids have been brilliant, and the staff so welcoming.

It's been a challenge coping with weather extremes (we've had pretty much every type of weather except snow), but I've loved every second of the experience and I think it's the best mural I've painted to date. I only wish I could bring it home with me.

Here's some pics, the first few show the mural panning from left to right.

As the foliage is growing down onto the wall, I decided to carry on painting the leaves onto the wall post.

I added a little gekko to one of the trees.

Each of the trees has the year of the children whose handprints created the "leaves."

420 handprints = 4 palm trees

The Grafton Junior School mural continues apace.

At last, after being rained off for days (I know, in English summertime, who'd have thought it?), I was finally able to get round to painting the children's hands to form the leaves of the trees. I'd painted one tree for each year, years 3-6 at the school. All 420 children got involved, with each child adding their own handprint to the wall for posterity. Most of the teachers and staff at the school joined in too, including the headmaster.

I've also added a few details to the leaves, plants and flowers, and painted the giraffe and the chameleon. Though you may not be able to spot him. He's very good at hiding you know.

Miss Holloway from Year Six gets involved

Can you tell which band she'd been to see the night before?

The red flowers on the plants are also handprints