I'm pleased to say the method we had devised to mark out the second image worked well.
Whilst working on the image I took pleasure in the thought that “pouncing” through a cartoon is a technique that has been used over many hundreds of years. This is a recurring theme in a lot of my work with references back to artists and artisans of the 14th and 15th centuries who were no strangers to non figurative work.
The second piece of work has now been completely marked out and I have started filling in the colour. I have not reproduced an image such as this to such a large scale and the results were quite startling – with a dynamism and sense of movement I really had not envisaged. I'm very excited at the prospect of finishing it. The working title is “London Red” as I've been reading Peter Ackroyd's book about London, and it seems appropriate.
Whilst visiting Milan last week I went to the Castello Sforzesco. There is a room there called the Sala degli Scarlioni which was the audience hall of the Duke and takes its name from the red and white decorative zig-zag motif used on the walls, called scaglioni or scarlioni. Uncanny, eh?
