Canterbury station underpass mural part 1

So this is the monster project I’ve been working on for almost five months! For a lot of this project’s duration I’ve been juggling other various freelance illustration commitments – hence the long time line. It’s also a fairly detailed piece of work and therefore a little more time consuming than your average mural.

This project came about when Boroondara Council approached me earlier this year to come up with a mural concept for the Canterbury train station underpass as part of a graffiti prevention initiative and the local communities desire to visually enhance the underpass.

The surface area for this mural consists of a large abutment wall (approx. 20 meters long by 4 meters high) and three smaller pillar walls (approx. 4 meters wide each) underneath Canterbury train station. After visiting the site and seeing the many attachments on the main wall (pipes, exhaust fans, rails etc.) I had the realisation that these walls were not ideal for a single standalone image. To counter this I conceived of a sequence of panels that would sit in between these obstructions and combine to form a short narrative.

Boroondara’s brief called for imagery that appealed to children, referenced the local area and also suggested fantasy elements as a possibility. What I landed on for the final design is a sequence of comic book style panels that make up a short story in which a young boy awaits a train at what could be the Canterbury train station platform, and is taken on a magical ride in a flying machine by a mischievous pixie. Along the way the locations and scenery depicted bear similarities to the local area, not an exact depiction of Canterbury but perhaps an alternate universe Canterbury? To completely fill out the wall space and to have a motif that ties everything together, the panels sit on a backdrop of tree silhouettes that sit across the height and width of the walls.

It’s been a wild ride getting the work up to this current stage and I’m looking forward to completing the journey so everyone can enjoy the work. There’s still a bit of work to do, but for the moment here are some pics of the progress so far including images of the original design, enjoy!

Click here for a short video featuring the whole mural