Blackpool’s Sand, Sea & Spray festival 2015-2016

Sand, Sea & Spray festival 2015

sss2015

The one on the left is Ben’s (He Dreamt Mars) and the right side is my own.

Ben did his in an acrylic wash and then acrylic paint with a brush over the top.  I used masking tape and spray paint to get straight lines.

It was a real treat for us to work side by side and on such a prominent spot as well- down the side of the listed building Winter Gardens on Adelaide street. Up until then, each year, we’d only painted on temporary boards (there was one year they didn’t do the event at all, so we held our own smaller paint jam in a car park where we all had a wall) so it was great to get the opportunity to paint pieces that would be seen for a lot longer and in a line up of such great artists.  These pieces are still there now , as this year they found all new spots for artists to paint on.  It’s great to be able to take part in such an event as a local artist and do our thing alongside international artists.  Each year just gets better and better and it feels like we improve our skill each time.

David Healy AKA Infected By Design


Sand, Sea & Spray festival 2016

p1220072 thumb_dsc_0973_1024

Before I started painting my actual wall for the event, I was paid to do a couple of days of workshops with a group of kids, teaching them how to cut and use stencils.  This building houses RAW Photography studio.  The people there are very nice people and were keen to get involved with the event, so gave us use of their downstairs area to run the workshops and also said we could paint the side of the building as it was just a boring cream colour.  In the end it was decided that rather than let the kids just paint anything on the walls, they’d ask me to paint some things using the cherry picker. this was my first time using one and it was such a great experience! after a little crash course on the controls and its owner coming up in the cab with me to put the first pieces on the wall, I was allowed to to control it myself. Tim (the owner ) said by the second day I was almost as good as him! haha! The owners of the studio asked me to paint the power puff girls on the wall (there were 3 girls in the studio) I was also asked to paint a Boba Fett on there too.  I’d looked at the wall prior to the job and decided to have the power puff girls positioned under the lamps that were attached to the wall, so I had printed stencils for them. In hindsight though, I wish I’d made better use of the blank wall space and covered more of it.  Although, using the cherry picker, its hard to just paint in one area like you would normally. You have to swing the arm around and move back and forth to get to certain areas.  It was good fun though! Mad keen to use one again on a big job!

David Healy AKA Infected By Design