up next: robots mural in west lafayette

on sunday we will begin another mural, one which i am particularly excited about.  the indiana department of transportation gave us an incredible space: on SR 43/N. River Rd. in west lafayette, we will be painting a mural of robots on the concrete supports for the US52 overpass.  this space has had grey splotches of painted over graffiti tags for as long as i can remember.  and it has also been a space i've wanted to paint since the first time i drove past it on my way to chicago.  

the walls are immense, 30+ feet tall and around 30 feet wide, and there are 4 of them (however the back two pylons are only about 15 feet tall).  i have invited fellow stencil artist Pete Brown to join me in creating this mural.  he will be creating 'pop icon' robots and i will be using my own drawings in a color palette of rusting steel and oxidizing coppers.  we're both cutting stencils, which will give a really nice consistency in the images, because the styles are very different.  

today i started in on the giants, creating stencils for portions of the piece, while freehand painting the less detailed shapes.  the picture at the right is a bit sawed off, but the wall of my studio is only 10ft tall, and it works good enough for testing out combinations of stencils.  the top of his head is at about 9ft. up, so he will eventually be about 16-18ft tall when i add legs and the bottom 1/3 of his torso.  i'm testing out the the rust color combination also.  i wanted to try it out before i decided what kind of paint i could get away with.  the diamond plate looks great and it was easier than i thought it was gonna be.  i've also got several other heads, gears, pulleys, chains, rope, pipes, a clamp, claws, hands, wheels, and all kinds of other little details to add on.  this piece will be seen almost entirely by traffic driving past, but i want the details to be detailed up close too.  

i love having a studio wall that i can paint on like this.  it is a 10ft. tall sketchbook and it is a tremendous asset in trying to make images that take up building walls instead of gallery walls.  i've still got several stencils to cut, but we prime on sunday, and i should have enough ready to go by then.  painting murals is fun, they become part of the fabric of a community.  this one will be a lot of fun and hopefully people will enjoy it enough to slow down as they pass it on the road.  

television eyes taking a coffee break, shaded, kinda, but not painted