Recreating Bordalo II's work (FM)

As I said in a previous blog post, I really fell in love with the trash animal murals Bordalo has done. I instantly wanted to make my own version of one of them for my mural. I had an idea to use bottle caps as the central part of the work, as I thought it would be the best material to use as scrap metal on a smaller scale.

I tried to email him asking him what he uses, the thought process he goes through and how I could do it on a smaller scale, of course I got no reply so I had to do it the hard way.

First I needed to experiment, I picked my favourite mural (the raccoon) and deconstructed it seeing what parts are what. He uses wood, metal and tires primarily as well as vibrant coloured spray paint as a background and contrasting colours for the animal. I then did a page in my sketchbook where I wanted to try out different smaller materials so I got some tooth picks, the bottle caps, rice! and a penny for luck.

I felt like it was finally time to start, so I got loads of bottle caps from my brother who works at a bar and washed them because they were incredibly sticky.

I then got a handful and used pliers and a hammer to mould them into random shapes that looked like scrap metal.

Next I put the bottle caps into the shape of the raccoon, I did this very loosely and it ended up looking like a heart!

I glued all of it down using PVA glue, heres a tip.. don't use PVA glue. Instead use something like super glue or a hot glue gun.

Ok maybe use a thin coat of PVA glue because its great for sticking down loose bits of texture like the rice.

I finally got onto spray painting it.. in the snow. I put on a base of black paint then a bit of silver and finished it off with a mix of blue and green.

I then added the extra 3D parts, probably should of done this before painting the initial coat.

Next I did the final painting with acrylics. I painted the eyes, the ears and did a blue background to make it a more vibrant contrast.

I then realised that I accidentally made a koala, so I made the ears more pointy and added the whiskers with kebab skewers.

Finished!

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Evaluation & what to do going forward

Lets start with that went well

The buildup of texture within it is amazing. Its bright, colour and the contrast of colours is very striking. The acrylic paint's went really well and gave it a really shiny coat. I had a lot of fun creating it and I'm looking forward to doing the same technique.

What went wrong?

The worse thing I could of done is use PVA glue. I used too much of it and it soaked everything. Unfortunately It was the only thing I had to hand and I needed to experiment with this technique. It's still wet to this day though. If you look half way through the project pictures you'll see that I started using a hot glue gun, it was a great investment and thank you Amazon Prime!

I aslo had to spray paint in the snow and it took forever to dry which was probably down to the glue as well.

What to do going forward

I learnt a lot during this little project, I know to only use thin layer of pea glue in order to stick on the smaller textures. I need to glue all of the features on first before painting and to do each piece individually.

Overall I'm really excited to try this "full" scale, by that I mean on an A2 page.