Since the meeting on Tuesday about the Ly2 mural, I've worked at it constantly in one form or another. Deb and I visited the site last night to measure it more thoroughly. The sign, being 3M from the side was so invasive that I needed to plan to avoid it. This measurement was vital. We also noticed that the whole surface slopes at a gradient of 10cm every 5M.
My initial 14x2M design was, today, refined into a new 13x2.8M design, on A4, but the concept was broadly the same. The idea reads, unusually, from right to left. I started with the roaring mouth; a machine mouth, of industry and the industrial revolution. It moves, from the right into the technological revolution.
Today I added some bees, and made a tiny plant on the left a sort of focus, hope perhaps. Many of the ideas here have been influenced by Jacob Bronowski's The Ascent of Man. One key aspect was about the industrial revolution, and the new new 'information revolution', which has taken/is taking place on that scale across our planet. His talk about science enlightened me to the fact that before the industrial revolution, science sought to probe and understand, but then and subsequently, to control. Our information revolution seeks to copy, store, harvest and hoard information. Nature does this, bees do, so perhaps the bees represent that, as well as industry and nature. There is a general theme of nature being conquered or assaulted here. My song featuring 'information hives' is part of the imagery too.
After that A4 drawing, I scanned and printed it in sections, tracing to a 1:16.666 scale image (8cm to 1M). This will be my master plan. I must then either make a third copy for shading, or use the master plan and make a smaller shaded mock-up to test the look with the colours.
It's been an intense day, but it seems that the ideal time (for me) to paint will be the week starting September 4th, hardly any time at all to plan, but enough. I'm unsure if David or the council can cope with such a schedule, but I will be ready.
I've also found time to send a copy of AI and Celebrity to David at the local Cat Radio, and do some basic admin work on that. There are 5 weeks until the single release. Aside from designing and painting this large mural in that time, I must film and edit a music video, and rehearse for the Fall in Green Words & Music performance in October.
One aspect of this design I like is the two-tone colour aspect. I've not worked in two stark colours before, or at least rarely. This time I'm acutely aware of the power of negative space. Both spaces really are equal, when flat and in lines like this. The art of M.C. Escher is in my mind constantly as a result.
