Noah's Ark, the original prototype for the mural now available as a print

At last Noah’s Ark is now available as a glicee limited edition fine art print! Fine Art Editions have taken on this image for publishing which will soon be available in galleries throughout the UK. However you can buy it from here too, just drop me an email and I can arrange delivery for you. Glicee prints are debated as the best type of art print, which is colourfast, colour perfect, and has such a high quality finish that you could compare it to the equivalent of HD hitting the TV world.

There are two sizes, the dimensions of the large print are: image size 54cm x 48cm, size of print with a mount 73cm x 68.5cm. The price of a mounted print is £139.

And small: image size 36cm x 40cm, size of print with mount 52 cm x 56cm. The price of a mounted print is £95

All prints will be signed and altogether there will be a total number of 395. This print is so hot of the press that at the moment numbers from 3 – 10 are still available. There will be 395 prints in total and the lower the number the more sought after in the future when they have sold through. Artist proofs are also available at this present time, which are complete one offs – they are the proofs created before the run of limited edition prints is made. 10 of these are created in total and only vary slightly in colour until the artist is happy with the final colour quality, these too can become valuable collectors items.

As many of you know there is a story to this painting. This is the original piece that was created to give me a prototype for my Plymouth Mural at Cattedown. It was used grid for grid and very little changes were made to the final image. Here is the mural below that was created form Noah’s Ark above.

noah's ark mural cattedown plymouth

Thursday was the grand unveiling of the mural at Noah’s Ark Child Care Centre and what a lovely sunny day! David Gibson (pictured top left) from the National Aquarium came and cut the ribbon for us. You can see Tim and Nyree Squires owners of the Noah’s Ark Child Care Centre holding the special plaque that was hand made for the occasion. The plaque will be put up next to the mural and has my name on it (which I found particularly exciting!) and the kids from the centre all dressed up as their favourite animals to enjoy the day. The Herald and Shopper came to take some snaps for us and this is one that Dave my partner took along with some more below. All in all it was a lovely day, it was great to meet the families from the centre and celebrate the finish at long last! Also this week find me in the Western Morning News this Friday (22nd July)

Photo by:

www.davebutt.co.uk

I have finally finished it!

Well here it is the finished mural, one last coat of varnish yesterday and the mural was complete! It is a wonderful feeling to have it finally finished! Sorry the piccie isn’t clearer, I hope to have some great ones come Thursday.

This Thursday (14th July) there is going to be a full day celebration at Noah’s Ark Child Care Centre in Cattedown, Plymouth. The day will start at 10am with lots for the family to do including an animal themed party for the kids, art activities, face painting and lots more. The children at the centre will be dressing up as their favourite animal so if you have a little one they may want to dress up too. It’s not just for the kids though- I hear through the grapevine there are cakes on offer and of course as I have no kids of my own I shall be around to chat to about my stories during the mural. At 3pm David Gibson our special guest from the aquarium will officially unveil the mural to the public with the day ending around 4pm. We have members of the press coming along too. It should be a really fun day and whether you have kids or you’re just a kid at heart I would be delighted to see you and share the day with you. For directions or more info contact Noah’s Ark 01752 601887 or visit http://www.noahsonline.co.uk/cattedown_nursery.asp

Hope to see you there!

After three more days of head down and paintbrushes working like mad, I was so pleased when I finally stood back from the wall tonight to see for the first time a ‘finished’ feel to the mural. I had to take two extra trips to the art shop to buy not one but two massive pots of yellow paint, but it was well worth it. The blending was definitely the hardest part of the sea but I am generally pleased with the overall effect. It is quite hard not to spend hours on one part of the picture, but I have to give myself time limits otherwise I wouldn’t get much done. Tomorrow is the day that I touch up all the little bits that have smudged paint, or need outlining again and then the best bit – I can sign it! I will still need to come back after that to varnish it but the main work is definitely done. I can’t wait for next Thursday for the unveiling of it! All welcome by the way.

Today was all about the fine detail. I spent a large amount of the day retouching line work and doing all the fiddly bits but also managed to gets some more animals done too like the rhino and foxes which I was pleased about.

I was so engrossed today and listening to some good music too that I didn’t notice the lady at the bottom of my scissor lift shouting up at me. I forgot that my banner was up and that my name was written on it so when she was calling me by name I thought it must be someone I know, as I looked at her my mind frantically ran through any people I might know with an Aussie accent and blond hair but it turned out she just wanted directions.  Now I haven’t really spoken about this on the blog yet, but I do get asked a lot for directions. This is not a good idea because not only am I dreadful at directions but I really don’t know Plymouth very well. To make things worse she didn’t even know where she wanted directions to and told me she was looking for ‘little streets’, scratching my head I said do you mean the Barbican? She said ‘well I don’t know, I’m just looking for little streets and the nice area’. I hope they did mean the Barbican, she handed me a bizarre looking map that to be honest didn’t even look like Plymouth so in the end I just pointed in a couple of directions and sent them on their way. What was quite amusing about all this is the fact that at that point there must have been about three other couples walking around the area that they could have asked, but instead they thought to ask the woman with headphones on, half way up a wall painting. What’s strange about this is that it happens at least once a day, I think I will have to add to the banner ‘don’t ask me for directions because rather embarrassingly I really couldn’t tell you where to go because I haven’t got the foggiest clue where things are in Plymouth’  But I still don’t think that would work either.

So anyone who knows me knows that I am terrified of bumble bees, therefore when I found myself half way up a wall and a massive one came flying at me attaching itself to my back, I couldn’t help but start screaming and flapping. The thing finally got off and as I steadied myself and checked who might have seen this little episode I was mortified to find a fire engine full of firemen looking at me with grins on their faces. No way to recover from that one.

Anyway managed to get more animals done today, decided that I needed a change from the boat and it proved much more interesting and fun, looking forward to tomorrow so I can get all the animals in that middle panel done.

So today I continued to add more colour to the boat. You can also see my fancy new banner too designed by Chris Rundle http://www.crdsigns.co.uk/about.php I rekon this will catch everyone’s eye as they walk past! Love it.

Hopefully tomorrow I can get all the boat finished, it seems to be a long job as each coat needs a second layer so that it doesn’t look patchy, still all good fun. Will keep you updated!

So this is how the mural looks after a day of line work! I am so excited, it really came together so much quicker than I thought it would. It just shows it was well worth the days work of griding the wall on wednesday, this helped tremendously and was a great guide. It meant less time placing the work and more time drawing. I think because I have also done a full scale painting of this (I painted it in pen and watercolour first 22″ x 22″ and will be selling the original after I have painted the mural) the fluidity of line came really quick. I haven’t put that original on here yet because I want the mural design to be a surprise! We can compare it when it’s finished and see how much it differs!

It is absolutely brilliant painting what would normally be a pen line and doing it on such a large scale. I think once I had my head phones in and had paint brush in hand the hours zoomed by with a nice panel at the end to show for it. I’m cream crackered now though and looking forward to a night in with a glass of wine and chocolate buttons.

There was an incident today with a heckler (a very rude one at that), I may go into more detail on this one another day, but why oh why can I never think of a quick witty reply until they are half way down the road and out of sight? To add insult to injury why does this always happen as I am trying to manoeuvre that bloomin’ machine (very badly), maybe that is the answer – I look so ridiculous it prompts every car with their window wound down to shout out some helpful words of advice…. very helpful indeed. It had to be a sunny day didn’t it? Mind you even if it wasn’t sunny and it was gushing down with rain, the amount of traffic that queues up next to my wall can’t help but curiously watch as I desperately grapple with that machine, resulting in them probably winding down their windows anyway and feeling the need to hollor across the road at me. I see it all as character building.

So today was the day that I started my big mural on the side of Noah’s Ark Child Care Centre in Cattedown… And what a day!

I thought the hard part of all of this was going to be griding the wall to get it all in proportion, finding someone to help me, painting in all the fine details… the list goes on (and I haven’t even started all that yet)… never did I imagine for a minute that I would suffer from vertigo!! My goodness that wall is high! Being a girl who in the past was always up for a competition to climb the highest tree and boast my fearlessness of heights I feel a sense of what many would call ‘swallowing my pride’ and admitting that it is TERRIFYING up there!

To be quite honest I actually started the mural yesterday and this was when the fear of God was put into me. I arrived at the wall at 9 o’clock ready to meet the hire guys who were going to give me my scissor lift that would become a companion to me for the next 6 weeks, whilst I waited I bimbled about checking my measurements and getting my paint pots ready (trying to look busy to the passers by) when after some time the guy arrived with scissor lift in tow. Now looking at the lift I didn’t feel particularly worried, but the moment he started getting it off the trailer I knew that this was going to be a hard machine to master. The scissor lift jerked off the trailer, clonking to the floor (even the hire man clung to the edge of the railings for a moment). I looked at him trying to hide my worry and thought I am sure all it takes is a bit of confidence. Now the next challenge was to get it onto the pavement and next to the wall, a ten point turn later and narrowly missing three cars and a lamp post we had the lift in position (how I am going to put this machine away every night is beyond me but hopefully I will learn). It was decided in the end that some planks of wood should be laid out to even out the very uneven pavement, I was a little concerned about this but I am assured this is normal. So after the lovely hire man had left I got on the machine and thought it would be rather fun to go straight to the top of the wall (6.5 meters tall). I pulled the leaver and whizzed up the wall as far as the machine would take me… and then I looked down. I froze for a second and felt my heart race a little faster. Unable to take my hand off the rail and reach down to my paint pot or even to my phone (suddenly I realised I had left the number of the hire company on the pavement and panicked for a second in case I couldn’t get down) I had a horrified moment of weak kneed dizziness and a blank mind as to what to do. It didn’t occur to me straight away that all I needed to do was pull the lever the other way. At that moment a gust of wind blew and the machine started waving in the wind (12mph winds!). This was all too much to bare and had I been a little younger I would have liked to shout frantically for help, instead I smiled weakly at the passers by who were walking over a bridge and looking at me rather curiously and tried to remain calm whilst I remembered that if I simply pulled the lever back I would be floor level in no time at all.

Once safely down I decided it would be best to work from the bottom and gradually work my way up.

So today I convinced Dave my partner to come and help me finish the priming of the wall and I can safely say it isn’t just me. Even confident Dave found himself a little queasy at the top to the point that we both got a fit of giggles bordering on hysterical laughter – the sort where you are so nervous that your body finds it strangely funny. Although thankfully today it wasn’t too windy!

Anyway after priming the wall Dave took my to Looe for the afternoon where another lovely gallery called Riverside Gallery took on some of my art work and two originals. Here is a photo Dave took whilst waiting for me in the gallery. I do love my job!