I had soooo much fun with this piece. It also made me nauseous and dizzy.
Read the bottom about how to get a piece of tricycle painted canvas with a portion of the money going to the Lance Armstrong Foundation.
on with the blog!
This piece went through so many different designs before finally settling on this one. At one point the piece was going to be 150feet by 100feet (I’m glad I didn’t go that route!). When I finally set about designing this I knew I wanted to really utilize the grooves in the tricycle tires to add some texture to the piece but they couldn’t be too distracting. I picked the size based on that.
Putting the tricycle together was really time consuming because I had very little metal to attach my extension to. After getting the extension figured out I quickly attached the bucket, tubing, and wrapped it all with electrical tape. I ended up at the hardware store dozens of times on this piece and when I went to get paint I had my colors picked out that I wanted and got an inquisitive look from the guy, cause you gotta admit these would be unusual colors for a room.
The recording challenges were interesting as well. I rigged up a holder for one camera and screwed it to the ceiling…. didn’t work… I put a wide angle lens on it… didn’t work …. I put another wide angle lens on it utilizing a friend of mine, scotch tape. The camera looked rather silly with a dozen yards of scotch tape holding the lenses on but it did the job.
I was all ready to paint and was trying to figure out if the paint would actually go through the tubes. I ran a test tube (ha) and found I would have to water it down pretty well…. actually I figured this out after some trial and error. In the video you can see the blue paint going on pretty slowly so I had to keep watering it down. Even at a good mixture it took over an hour to apply some of the colors because I had to ride over every inch of the piece. I averaged about one color a day and ended up riding on my tricycle for over 6 hours. My butt hurt a bit, the seat is not made for an adult.
Some pictures and explanations
This is a great example of how the paint went onto the canvas. I cut stencils out of plastic and laid them on the canvas, rode around applying paint, then took off the plastic to show the paint applied exactly where I wanted it. This was how I achieved detail in such a small area. And here in the photo is the tricycle with the blue stencil.
Some paint on the plastic stencil
In progress. You can see a few spots where the paint got through the plastic into a place it shouldn’t be. Fixed with a light touch up later.
A close up so you can see the imprint made by the tires. I really liked this look.
I took some extra yellow and made covered this canvas. I will be cutting this piece up and giving it away with purchase of a poster on or before May 1st. Also all purchases made on or before May 1st will have a portion of their proceeds given to the Lance Armstrong Foundation. We’ll see what gets made with the little items they send out upon donation. woo!
Hope you liked the piece! It was a blast to put together.
phil
