Acrylic on MDF board. 60x90cm. Completed 2000.

Titled ‘King of Dirt’ after the contest series, this artwork features a rider (TJ Lavin), mid-trick, over a big dirt jump. Photorealism is the only way such an image could be painted properly. This is where I really began to use the incredible power of a computer to manipulate the image to be drawn and then painted. In this case the image was changed to reduce to the obvious curvature from the wide angle lens. The source was from Snap BMX magazine and the photographer was Keith Mulligan.

However I felt the subject matter wasn’t serious enough and nor was it as hard as I had expected. I did continue to improve on many levels; the initial computer work, the drawing stage and finally the painting stage. There’s a lot to making a photoreal painting work and there were no teachers I could look to, no books or anything. I had to develop my own techniques and skills. There is an abstract painting titled The joy of listening to Miles Davis on the rear of this work.