Southern California landscape

Acrylic on canvas board. 60x90cm. Completed 1999.

My first work using photorealism was taken from Snap, an American magazine. I had learnt a grid would enable a detailed drawing to be made, and that this was to be the key to creating my own work. It featured a group of BMX riders in the first berm battling for position. I was always a keen cyclist and had started riding at the local track in my early 30′s discovering a passion that I’d missed in the early eighties when it was going through its first surge of popularity. The picture features two riders prominently – Christophe LeVeque and John Purse, who at the time were dominating the sport. The race was called the So. Cal. Nationals and this became the basis for the title of the painting – ‘Southern California landscape’. Metaphorically speaking this was perfect as an example of America’s worldwide cultural influences. The addition of a commentator in a green jumper was added to create an idea that this art was about commenting and not just a visual thrill.

A computer running Photoshop was used to view the work, which meant learning a new set of skills. The original layout of the magazine article had several photos inset over part of the shadows of the riders. I then had to work out what actually lay under the overlaid images, so I whited out them out and with a pen had an educated guess. Once I was happy with the forms I painted them. Still unsure I contacted the photographer who e-mailed a copy of the original. Much to my delight I was very accurate in filling the shadows in! There were problems encountered, however, the background was changed because it didn’t suit my needs and the use of canvas board didn’t lend itself to detail work, (I decided to use a different support for when starting the drawing for the next work).

King of Dirt

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.