Ride the Lightning! - Part 1

I've had an interesting opportunity in the form of an RAF F35 maintenance section asking me to paint their break rooms mug board.

Due to the amount of caffeine consumed on a daily basis, rather than store their coffee mugs in a cupboard, they simply have a wooden board covered in hooks to hang the mug handles from.

Their old one was plain white with sheet music painted on it (nobody knew why!), so they wanted something more relevant to them.

I searched for a reference picture for a while and settled on this photo taken by Jamie Hunter.

Making a start

The first step was removing all of the hooks, giving the board a good clean and covering up the old design with several layers of matt white paint.

The outline was achieved with a £30 projector from amazon

Although I primed it with matt white, it was immediately apparent each section would need more than one coat of colour to stop the white underneath showing through.

This photo shows one of the difficulties I found with having my studio on the shaded side of my house. Better lighting is required!

I didn't know it before I started but the canopy would be the most complicated section of the painting. So many different colours and shapes.

Once it was done though the picture started coming to life and I got the motivation to put more time into it each day.

I never expected to be applying so much brown to a picture of a grey jet. It's fascinating how much colour reflects off the side of the jet from the hillside that the photographer is standing on.

A little investment in the form of a ring light has helped speed up the process massively. And will facilitate a huge new project I'm starting after this piece is complete.

I started this at the end of March but with a lot of time between painting sessions due to work commitments. Fingers crossed I can show you part 2 and the completed piece in only a few weeks time!