HSS; Live Painting & The Day

The Day

Humber Street Sesh was, as always, a brilliantly beautiful day. For the first time in forever the weather also played ball, so the atmosphere at the pier where our live art gazebo was set up, was fantastic. I got there early to help Alan with constructing the gazebos and getting my Visual Artist lanyard and production wristband. The day was great, as always there was a huge turnout, and despite last minute changes to where we were situated on the site, a huge number of people scrolled past to chat, take photos and admire the artwork around them.

Something I've always found a little daunting when live painting in big groups is the work of others around me. Everyone works in such hugely different styles and that can be a little scary. There are always points throughout the day I worry about my work when compared with those around me. But I've also learnt to be confident in my practice too, it takes a little longer for my work to start to look refined, there was a lot of time this year it just looked like blocks of colour on a board, but the overall finish is something of a high standard; I keep this in mind while others around me may seem to be speeding ahead or working with a process different to my own. It helps that the bunch at Something Entirely Different (the art collective I'm a part of that put's the live art on every year) are all so lovely and supportive; when my work started to come together and people began to understand what it was I began getting a lot of praise from my peers and the public.

The Response

Though I didn't actually finish my piece this year, I felt very proud of what I'd created. I dipped in and out of painting to see what else was going on at the festival and support a few of my friends that were playing in bands during the day, and in the blistering heat it was a little bit of a push to keep painting all day (hydration is key!!). As the day drew to a close on the live painting, I ensured that I got the text of the piece down. I felt it gave the image more context and depth, and though the nerves started to sink back in as I was writing it out, I am SO GLAD I did.

Once the text was on the board the reactions I got from the public were touching. I spoke to a woman called Ali about my work and she said things that filled my illustrator heart to the brim with happiness. She said I wrote so beautifully and honestly, I thanked her and expressed how I'd been a little nervous about the piece, worried about whether people would understand it or not. She told me 

"The people who feel things are always going to get it. And the people that don't wouldn't ever get it no matter how good the art was."

The response I got on social media after HSS was also wonderful. Both Mak and Dan who run The Sesh wrote to me about how touching they found the work, and people taking photos to tag on social media like instagram and facebook helped to spread it around even more. I've also had a lot of people inquire about the piece itself, and the possibility of prints. It's a piece I'd love to finish, and maybe do a run of digital prints if photographed well enough. For sure HSS'16 has been my best experience of live painting to date, I loved the process of working bigger and still being able to bring that intimate feeling to a piece, I'd love to do more work like this going into the future.