Dubai or do you sell?

Had the fortunate oppurtunity to visit the state of Dubai. I was asked to draw on some panels during the opening of the AEROPOSTALE clothing store in the largest shopping mall in the world, The Dubai Mall. We used Edding Secret Wars pens (specially made for the battles back in the UK) and the ink was flowing.

Dubai is like a giant meccano set, construction work going on all around. Some of the craftsmanship evident in the buildings seemed very authentic. The place was over populated with skyline-piercing cranes. This became my subconscious theme. Tek 1 joined me on the journey, who I have been sharing a studio with for a while now.

We worked the sketches completely unrehearsed and were very happy to find out we weren’t sketching on the same night we got there. There were a few other things going on… A hip-hop DJ set from Venus, basketball trickery from the great Tommy Baker…

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and beatbox by the wonderfully animated Wandan.

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The mall had only been open three months and the whole place was spotless.

We could have sold the work three times over, many people coming up to ask questions about selling work, and many ex-pats who were wanting to buy the panels we had drawn.

My panels in more detail:

Did you spot the letters in the first day & third day drawings?

Day one has the word CHU in the chain links, and day three has the word AERO spreading throughout the panel (buildings, clouds, cables and roads)