Extended Practice - 'Neon Cactus' Bar Mural Commission

Brief:

I was approach by a bar in Leeds called 'Neon Cactus' they asked me if I could paint a wall in there bar. They contacted me via Instagram so had a good idea of the type of mural work I could produce for them. A friend of mine also tagged me in a post of theirs where they were looking for a new artist too commission.

• I arranged the commission via instagram, and negotiated a price for my work. I was going to produce a design that was a cactus theme applied to my own character designs. 
• I sent them some photos of interior work I had done inside another bar last year to give them an idea of how the finished thing will look. And got them to send me photos of the wall that needed painting so that I could start working on a design that will fill the space well.

First Ideas:

• I wanted to see how could combine my tribal face designs with features from a cactus, like the spikes, the colour and the weird structure to them.
• I had literally just bought my own wacom tablet so I experimented with some digital sketching - I just wanted to get used to the tablet and also was a good way to experiment with some quick colour application.

Sketches:

Final Sketch:

• This is the final sketch I wanted to go through with for the mural design. I liked the loose symmetry and composition, and the shape and layout would fit the shape of the wall nicely. 

Progress photos...

 Finished Piece:

• Im super happy with the outcome for this brief, I had so much fun painting the piece and I felt that I had been well organised with the overall production of the mural. 
• I had a good colour pallet and had enough spray paint to work comfortable across the whole piece (unlike working on the coffee box). 
• I used a black paint pen for parts of the outline which helped give it a more intricate and detailed finished - I will continue to do this on my large scale commission work, also look at how I can use pen in other colours too, it helps to break the consistency of the spray paint slightly.
• I really enjoyed applying the cactus theme to my character designs - I really wanted the cactus idea to be clear within the design and I think I pulled it off well, I wanted to get a good balance of my own visual identity as well as strong cactus characteristics. It could have easily become a composition of green tribal faces but the cactus features are obvious within it which i'm really pleased about. Its helped me think about other ways I can apply specific themes to my mural / large scale painting.

Close ups...

Neon Lighting...

• The neon / UV lighting was a subtle but very effective touch to the piece and was really interesting to see how the piece changed under the uv light. With the bar being called the 'neon cactus' I think the painting is well suited for some interior decoration in the bar.
• I had some really good feedback from the bar and they where happy with how it looked. 
• I'm really pleased I got commissioned for some more interior bar work because this is a direction I really want to take my future practice - It gives me confidence in progression, I feel like my skills are well suited for this kind of work.