Thursday 6 January 2011

Robot Graveyard

Today I have photos of A commission I finished over the Christmas period, This is the largest canvas I have done to date and was quite a challenge. I was pretty happy with the finished piece and I feel I learnt a lot from doing it.


Anyway, here it is!

The piece measures 1000mm x 400mm in total, I've named it 'Robot Graveyard' which is a title I had in my head before I began. I've done some close up images to try and pick out some areas of detail.

I did the piece for a friend of mine, Lisa. Her  only instructions being that she had a bare wall and a giant blank canvas. Her room is coloured black and white so the canvas must also be black and white.

I knew she liked robots and lets be honest, they're pretty cool to draw!

The piece was drawn entirely using marker pens so it would probably be fair to say i was pretty high whilst drawing it. (which is pretty evident i guess)

I wanted  give an impression of Nature and Machinery entwined together. The large flowers on the right hand side mimic the angle of the robotic arm.
 

The most difficult thing was only using Black, I knew from the outset i would have to be clever in how i used the negative space (The white of the canvas) to try and get some depth into what i was drawing.

The main thing I learnt from this piece is that planning is everything! It took me about 12 hours in total to complete 'Robot Graveyard'

Here are a couple of things I enjoyed while working on this piece:

1) Hot Chocolate, lots of it
2) Chocolate Brazil Nuts (Christmas present)
3) Nirvana - In utero
4) Kevin Devine - Make the clocks move
5) Nada Surf - The Proximity effect
6) Phil Collins - Greatest Hits (As always)
5) Match of the day
7) My Radiator (It's warm when turned on)


There's an sneaky owl hiding somewhere in the piece, 10 cool points to you if you spot him