Risinghurst Fun Day 2012
This was the first of the Risinghurst Fun Day murals. It was drawing an imaginary version of the Fun Day with the truck on the A40 advertising the evernt, a Jack-in-the-box, some ghosts, some people riding a dog, the paddling pool, a somewhat sinister character burning the the burgers, people being generally happy including the hill, a hot air balloon, a hare bouncing on the bouncy castle, not to mention a snail and a donkey. I think Mike Busby might have had something to do with this one. Note to myself in the future: please don’t give anyone younger than 18 a palette load of paint: they just mix it into greeny brown and it’s all wasted…

Risinghurst Fun Day 2013 – underwater theme
The underwater theme features a kangaroo in a boat catching a whale, several sharks, jellyfish, a poisonous sea snake, a space hopper riding evil octopus, plenty of star fish, a yellow submarine with disembodied heads (I don’t think that’s intentional – some children don’t really understand the need for bodies to make the heads work… A toddler splatted loads of paint all over the place but with judicious deployment of boggly eyes I turned what would have otherwise been a total waste of paint into a shoal of fish.

Risinghurst Fun Day 2014 – space theme
Observe the space hopper, the moon, the ice cream van rocket , the planet, the dog in a space suit, shooting stars, Discovery-1, and most importantly of all the black hole where matter is falling in, radiation is simultaneously red and blue shifting as matter tries to escape, before time and space intermingle: a concept which was readily grasped by a 5-year old…

Risinghurst Fun Day 2015 – Abstract cosmic theme
So this was the latest installment of the Risinghurst Fun Day painted mural. This year was going to be different: for a start pesky children who waste lots of paint weren’t going to get involved. Secondly I was going to paint something abstract, and it was going to be a cosmically themed interaction of a neutron star and a black hole, with streams of matter spiralling in with the Einsteinian gravitational distortion effects. So I mounted the board a good 4 feet off the ground to keep the smallest kids away and started painting. Unfortunately the wind started to shake the board and it became a Health and Safety issue, so I had to move it to ground level. A subsequent swarm of kids, mothers and dads started grabbing brushes, and with no clear plan of action it became much more abstract than I originally intended…