Art Battle Manchester
Champion of Champions!
Art Battle Manchester was to stage its biggest show to date at none other than the iconic New Century
A previous winner, I was asked to take part in the Art Battle Battle Royale II.
The spectacle of painters, illustrators, tattooists, and street artists go head-to-head. With only 30 minutes to create a masterpiece, the audience decides the winner of each round and -ultimately - the artist who will be crowned Champion of Champions.
It took a couple of weeks and a few study attempts to decide on a reference. I was looking for an image that expressed an emotion and could create an impact within the setting.
I settled on an image of a woman crying, her face coming out from the shadows. I like to push the colours when I'm painting portraits, her bright red nose drew me in initially.
I worked on defining a limited colour palette and to really identify the key features of the face. Because the final painting was so large, I wanted to attenuate the zygomatic arches, the shadows in the eyes and red of the nose.
I cropped the portrait to just include the eyes and nose and practiced painting it at full scale (24 x 30 inches), within 30 minutes. There were varying results, but overall I was pretty happy. I did this for 4 evenings leading up to the event.
The evening went pretty well - I won, haha. I knew from the previous time that I was able to block all of the noise and people out once I started to paint. And even though we had a 1000 strong audience, I didn’t feel nervous.
I entered the arena to my chosen song, Show Me Love by Robin S. I was ready to smash it! Only once I started painting, I realised that I couldn’t see the colours on my palette under the famous hall lights. It was similar to a limited Zorn palette with not much tonal differentiation. After an initial panic, I started to remember the location of each colour. I made a few mistakes, but had time to fix them.
I had an absolute blast, its a great event and would encourage all artists to have a go as it definitely helps you with speed and takes you out of your comfort zone.
