Blood will Flow

This time I'm painting in a really nice space called Makerspace - I knew the elephants were going to be problematic at nearly 3m long and 1.6m tall, so I'd been desperately looking around for somewhere to paint. My brother in law had offered up his garage which I'd used for the rocket, but fitting two elephants in there would have been really cramped. Anyhow, long story short, I posted on a creatives group on Facebook, and this Makerspace came up. I had heard of it before but I'd thought they only had the top floor of the premises, which last time I'd seen pictures were full of lathes and printers and laser cutting equipment. But it turned out they'd expanded into the ground floor - had two decent sized rooms with natural light and big double doors - flipping marvellous.

So I've made great progress! One is practically finished, I just need to get sign off from the trail organisers next week so I can varnish, and the second one just needs the special paint applied to the legs and some finishing touches and it too will be done. I'm really pleased. I'd thought they would take me much longer!

So here are a few sneak peeks. I know you won't, but please don't share anywhere, as the trails always want to keep the full designs secret until the launch dates.

This one is called It's a Holi Holiday, and is meant to be a representation of the Hindu Holi festival of colour.


It's all done with cans of spray paint apart from the flowers which were acrylic marker pens, and the hearts which I used a stencil brush. The hands are three different sized stencils I cut myself.

The second one is called We Will Rise, and has a more serious theme - the phoenixes are refugees/migrants, fleeing their homes to make new lives in our country. Luton, where this trail is going to be, has a large population of migrants of varying backgrounds. I got some special paint called Scorched Earth from Jackson Art, which they made for a charity called Migrate. It's a black acrylic, made from ash taken from Kurdish fields destroyed in Iraq. When I read about the making of the paint, I bought 2 tubes in the hopes of being able to use it on something meaningful, so I was really happy when this design got chosen.

I hope people will stop for a moment and think about the many reasons people have for leaving everything they know behind to try and start all over in a strange place.

Anyway, I haven't applied the Scorched Earth paint yet, that's what I need to do next week, so here's We Will Rise as of yesterday.
I can't get back far enough to get the whole side in from this direction

I'm having a sit down after spraying my gorilla. News Flash - art hurts, folks! My back is sore and my right hand is complaining after holding the spray nozzle down. Heh. I'm a wimp.

So here's the spraying in action. Sorry it's a link not an embedded gif but it's not working and I can't remember the workaround. :(

I did garner some interest from passers by, though not as much as you might expect.

Here's how he looks at the moment - though the darker blue in the photo isn't showing right, it's more a kind of purple. Now I've got to wait until Paul comes home and we are going to attempt to get him into the house. First we need to move Magical Mysteryphant the elephant out...


Before I went to the Isle of Man I'd been painting my first Elmer the Elephant - a Beatles-themed one called Magical Mysteryphant - which I had a lot of fun with. Sadly it's for Plymouth, not my home town trail!
In spite of that, I'm pleased how it's turned out.

John and Paul are on the other side, and the magical mystery tour bus is on the bum.

So he needs to move outside to await collection, and tomorrow I have another blank one arriving from Plymouth which will be next on my list after I've done the gorilla.

I'm still waiting to hear whether I have any more to paint - the Elmers for Newcastle haven't done their selection process yet, so I could still get another elephant. I won't be painting an Oor Wullie, but to be honest, that's a relief as it was such an odd shape.