Urban ‘floor’ art, something you can only appreciate from a drone
Drones can be great tools for capturing and planning street art projects. Meet ‘Barry’, a 26-old street artist from Derby, Australia who uses drones during the various stages of creating his colorful floor murals.
Barry is an Australian street artist who got into street art after doing tags and graffiti for years. As his style improved over time, he changed his spray cans for a roller pole, that it allowed him to cover wider surfaces as he likes to do big scale works. About two years ago, he started doing murals on floors, in places that were untouched or hadn’t been painted over yet. He has been doing street murals for ten years now and is a big fan of the artist-based street art culture.
Over time, Barry developed a style that uses multiple single stripes, each one having the width of a single roller pole. He admits this choice is somewhat of a necessity, as he lacks the traditional drawing skills of other artists. One benefit of painting on the street, is that the pavers act as a grid. This makes it easy for him to do perfect straight lines. After experimenting with this idea, he developed this into a personal style over the last six months.
Before starting to paint, Barry plans makes a design in terms of colors and geometry. His working method is explained as follows:
Darren Smith: Could you tell us about your choice for geometry and colors for your street murals?
Barry: Yes. Because I prefer doing long lines over large spaces, using the same colors gives it a kind of trippy effect. Also, I incorporate geometry into my work, such as blocks of letters that are turned 90 degrees clockwise.
Fremantle street art project
Barry’s latest street art project took place in Fremantle’s Westgate mall, where he painted a large floor mural. The site will be redeveloped soon, with old buildings making way for new apartments, but is largely unused in the meantime. So, in order to bring some life to the existing space, the City of Fremantle sanctioned a street art project so that anyone can come down and paint the space, taking away any possibility of prosecution.
The street mural project was an initiative of a friend, who invited the artist to paint the surface. Barry says the project is beneficial to both the artists and the city council: otherwise, it would have cost the council $8000 in materials and labor to paint the surface. Barry did the project for free, as a local recycling center donated the paint to him. One 30-line mural took one month to complete, as each line takes him 1.5 hours. Barry likes to work fast, but explains that using a roller pole, his arms start to get sore after painting two or three lines.
Social media helped Barry to get more exposure for this work. He recently created an Instagram account because an online channel is an easy way to do marketing.
Darren Smith: What are the tools you use for getting more jobs or exposure?
Barry: “Instagram is an extension of what I’ve been doing all along, which exposes my art to an audience. It’s similar to meeting a lot of people on the street when I’m working on my art for extended periods of time. It gives people the opportunity to ask you questions about my work, which is how I meet other people that are in the business. Just by having a paintbrush or spray can in your hands enables people to identify with me and see what kind of things I’m into”.
Capturing street art with a drone
On YouTube, there’s drone footage made with a Phantom III Standard drone, showing Barry’s colorful street art in the Fremantle mall, seen from the air. The footage was taken on a sunny day that blends nicely with Barry’s painted lines on the ground, enabling an overall experience of his street art. Until recently, the artist only took drone shots of the finished works, which is due to the fact that he doesn’t know that many people who own a drone. For the Fremantle mall, he had a friend take a few drone shots at midday for progress monitoring.
Barry now plans on acquiring his own drone, which enables him to map out a space before it is painted. This gives him a good impression of how big the space is and how long the project will take before it’s finished. In the same way, a preliminary drone flight can help him find additional unused spaces that could be included in his street art project.
During the interview, Darren and Barry discussed the impact of the project on the surroundings and feedback from local residents.
Darren Smith: How do you think a mural this big changes the space?
Barry: “Until now, I’ve received a lot of positive feedback. A lot of people have been commenting on how much they enjoyed the street art and how it improves their day. Before, it was just gray pavement and now the site has 30 different colors. I’ve noticed an increase in foot traffic because of people interested to look at the art. It’s so much prettier and helps to people to relax”.
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