“Oh did we mention they need to be life-sized”

Well I’m always like a big challenge, but… “I’m gonna need a bigger ladder”.

The location is Mardeira Walk, Exmouth. The back walls of the Pavillion Theatre, a building that is more than four storeys at its highest. As it happens this project took over a year from conception to completion, with lots of authorities needing to be on-side, but tying it in with the re-decoration of the Theatre meant a clean surface for me to work on.

I needed to work out a way to draw dinosaurs in dynamic silhouettes. After a couple of drawing sessions, I bought all the model dinosaurs if could find, then sprayed them white, put them under a spotlight so I could experiment with creating shadows and photographed them when I was happy. On an iPad I re-drew the shadows and put a square grid over them.

The scaffold took three weeks to erect giving time to check a dinosaur height chart and compare that with the wall spaces I had available.

The day came to start. Where do I start? How do I start?

I got a tape measure out and started marking metre by metre squares on the wall. I had printed out my Tyrannosaurus-Rex on A3, (approximately one foot by two). On this I had drawn a grid of squares and taking one square at a time I started sketching out this monster.

As it happened a T-rex was only about 5 metres tall so I drew mine standing on a pile of rocks.

For those who like hidden secrets, my signature is hidden in the rocks. Another secret is the initials of the two Pavillion decorators are hidden in the Triceratops. I worked alongside these two characters, who whenever I wasn’t there claimed to passers by that they had painted the dinosaurs.