10 hours overnight on a high street in Manchester, more explanations after the jump
I thought I’d show (almost) every stage of the development of the piece, from sketch through to final painting. This was a special case as I only had a few days to plan it, then a scheduled time where I could paint after 5.30pm and finish no later than 8.30am. It was very important to get the mathematics of the scene correct before heading in to paint for (what later turned out to be only) 10 hours.
This is the actual shopping precinct in Altrincham, near Manchester. The concept was to show a pit of old machines, with the Blackberry Torch rising from it.
Initially a bridge was intended to allow customers access, until it was pointed out that it wasn’t real, so health & safety wouldn’t cause any problems.
More effort was put into the mathematics of the viewpoint (the most relative of all variables, as changing it changes everything in the painting dramatically). The final production shot was chosen to be a daytime scene, after a brief design for working at night too. Again, the colour choices had to blend in to give the illusion that, at the right time in the day, it causes the chasm and lighting effect.
The piece was signed off, and then it had to be reconstructed within a digital modelling tool (namely Googles Sketchup). This makes gradual yet significant changes to the final shapes required for painting on the floor at such a viewing angle.
All the shapes get longer the further they are from the viewer. It is here that any fine adjustments are made, readying the painting to be one step closer to becoming a large-scal, rapid, handmade, virtual reality.
360° panorama
I made another one of my 360 degree photographs below, during the big reveal in the early hours of Friday morning.
If you can see something happening below here – wait for it to load fully then click and drag around the image to look around. If its full of gobble-di-gook then you’ll have to view it in a regular (java script enabled) web browser.
