Dotty For F1: October 2008

Hi, i am Nikki and welcome to my blog. I am an artist, and also a devoted follower of F1. I have been for many years. My Love for McLaren has lasted for many years, and i have suffered and celebrated with the team and my hero, Ron Denis, through good times and bad.

After successfully completing the dot picture “INSIENNE” in June 2008 and recieving very welcome press interest in my work, I wasted no time in deciding on my next project. Anyone who knows and loves me, knows that the biggest passion in my life is Formula One. So it was no surprise that for my next project I wanted to turn my attention to my beloved McLaren team.

With only a four week break from sticking dots, I began planning out my Lewis Hamilton picture the day after my graduation, which happened to be the day after I had returned from Silverstone watching Lewis win in the pouring rain. Camping was not fun this year unlike previous years, the sun was not shining, and beers in the sun became shivering under an umbrella. Not a bad thing considering this was when I decided to would do a dot portrait of Lewis.

For anyone who did not see my work in the press or at my exhibition, the idea to stick hole punch dots to make a picture came from studying Seurat for my dissertation. It is based on the Art science of Optical mixing, where the eyes mix the colours together from a distance, creating the overall colour you desire. Rather that using all brown and skin tone dots for Lewis’ skin, I used blues, pinks, greens, oranges and purples. The eyes can see the colours close to the picture, but when you step further away, your eyes mix the colours to give the skin tones.

Detail

This is a slow and painstaking task, which takes months of sticking hole punching and working out. It is a bit like doing a huge quarter of a million piece jigsaw, but you don’t even know what the pieces are yet. I have spent nearly every waking hour over the past two months working on this, and even though it is not quite finished yet, I felt with the chance that Lewis could win next weekend it would be nice to share this with all the suffering McLaren fans and shout, COME ON LEWIS!
It’s been 9 years since Mika won the championship, give us something to Celebrate!

to see the birth of dot art and other art please visit my other blogs and website.

Me howing off my Mclaren t shirt on the Spa track after Kimi won in 2004. I wasn't the only McLaren fan there but we were few and far between surrounded by "The Reds" as they watched you know who claim his Seventh world championship. This was the only race that we won that season, and i was there. Great 30th Birthday Pressi, the first race i had ever seen in real life, probably one of the best days ever, except Mr Coulthard crashing his car right in front of me, how rude!

Silverstone 2005, shouting on Kimi and Montoya, In the days when the black t-shirts were few. But a first and third ment plenty to celebrate and my flag was flying high outsude our tent, despite the fact that i was the only McLaren Fan.