Something completely different - wall art

To tell you this story, you have to meet Suzanne first. Here she is, a well known local hairdresser. What's new is that she is now running her own salon, after being either an employee of another salon or doing home visits for many years.

Here's her salon website page http://suzannessalon.weebly.com/ and the Facebook page ​https://www.facebook.com/SUZANNESSALON1/ 
(You will notice how very proud Suzanne and Louise are with the results of their hair colouring talents.)
​Anyhow, in her travels Suzanne saw this image (below) and had an idea.

She wanted something like this on her salon wall too, so she asked me to do it.
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The first step was working on the computer and using Adobe Illustrator to produce an image that could then be reproduced freehand grid-by-grid.​

As you can see, this print out got a lot of use.
Once Suzanne was happy with the size and placement on the wall, I got busy with a pencil, ruler and set squares to align the grid and then start the image.

It gradually took shape...

And looked a lot better once the no longer necessary grid lines were removed.
​Now onto the painting stage...

It was a different experience painting on a vertical surface rather than a horizontal one. To keep the edges and points as sharp as possible I made use of good quality masking tape. That's the blue masking tape you can see below.

And here it is, finished but for the removal of a few pencil marks that will come off easily from the 'wash n wear' paint background.

It was something completely different to what I normally do, and it feels good to have overcome all of the new challenges that came with it. Of course I'll see all the errors in it, and never be completely happy, (that's life as an artist), but hopefully Suzanne, Louise and their customers will enjoy it for many years to come.
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Thanks Suzanne for trusting me with this project.