Fresh Creative Co. received a request to add a splash of colour to a large prototype set of Axjet speakers.
This presented an interesting challenge as the speakers were curved and contoured, without a flat surface in sight. Read on to hear how we went about tackling this challenge.
PROCESS
The project kicked off with the Speakers being delivered to our workshop about a month ago. Once we had them in our possession we started off by taking photos of the speakers from different angles, front on, side profiles and a back view. We took these photos into photoshop and began to plan out some designs. We researched a variety of pattern based art which we reproduced our own version of, and we also took parts from some different graffiti pieces we’ve painted over the years, zooming in on different areas to find interesting shapes and abstract patterns within them. We then took these images and mapped them over the photos of the speakers that we’d taken, giving us an all around design what encompassed a whole speaker.
Once we’d settled on a few different designs we were happy with we sent those over to the owners for them to make their final decision on which direction we were to go in. It was decided that we would use an abstract graffiti style, with blown up images of letters and parts of letters wrapped around the speakers. Now all we had to do was paint them.
We used spray paint to paint the speaker housings, first marking up a rough, sketch outline on them to work from. Once we had these outlines in place and we’d gone back over them a few times to make any adjustments we thought they needed, we began the process of filling them in. This was challenging because the design of the speakers include two large, rounded inverted cones, sunken into the surface of the speakers. There wasn’t too much room to move freely inside these cones and the further in you got, the tighter the space became. When we reached a point where everything was filled in we began the task of outlining the letters and abstract shapes that filled the surface. To finish off we added a layer of lacquer to help protect the paint job.
FINISHED PIECES
No matter how enjoyable this project was, these speakers were difficult to paint. the curved surface makes it a lot harder to paint clean lines than it is on a flat wall and they were filled with spaces that were difficult to access. They were also large and heavy, which meant lifting them onto a table to paint at eye level was out of the question. Even with kneepads, the hours spent kneeling on the workshop floor to work on them took its toll on the knees. A lot of these things that made it difficult, however, were the same things that made these speakers a lot of fun to paint. It’s so enjoyable to work on something so different to our usual fare, and we were extremely happy with how they came out. They really looked great once they were finished, we wished we could keep them! To find out more about Axjet speakers visit http://www.axhornloudspeakers.com/axjet-speakers/
