Les Trois Ages Du Dragon Baligan

My first full sketch for the picture was in blue biro.  

amalgamating the two left panels the first full size sketch was in charcoal

It's been a cool summer with changeable weather

The space has no electricity.  To make best use of the light my back is to the window whilst working. I arranged my larger paintings about the walls for display and gave tours when people were interested.  I find painting a picture in public with a subject understood by that public both gratifying and motivating.  If the painted picture is a tired old media object, painting the picture in public is vital.  On the street art.

 A journalist for Ouest France was covering a yacht race back in early July.  He talked to me about my project, recorded the conversation and took a couple of pictures to make the short article below.

 

I had initially envisaged beginning the picture in April so as to finish in high summer when the port is busiest.  It was mid June when I actually began the painting and port visitors were already beginning to flow past my painting space.  I had imagined a much looser painting keeping more of the improvised lines of the early sketches.  But I lost some of this play in the final painting.  A cost of public performative painting was a defendable popular, illustrative and so easy-readable and explainable style.  

Throughout the day I would explain the story of the picture to general public both familiar and not with the legend and industrial projects depicted.  One Sunday afternoon I talked to two concrete workers from the nuclear construction site for an hour about my pictures and art.  After presenting my work to a family an 8 year old girl excitedly reported to her father 'being in that gallery was like being in that man's head'.