A couple of months ago, I was commissioned by Transport For London and Wild in Art to produce two designs for the Croydon leg of the Year of The Bus sculpture trail. This post is part one, and is all about the paint, sweat and tears that went into their decoration.

Having not painted one of these sculptures, I was a little unsure how the coming weeks would pan out. Given that I was doing two buses and everyone else seemed to just have one, there was no time to be wasted pretending to be an art student with all the time in the world. The first task was to choose my buses and start prepping them for all the acrylic paint to come.

Bus 1 - Croydon Layers

The first bus was called 'Croydon Layers', and suddenly looked very complicated...

Bus 2 - Surrey Street Market

Onwards with the next design, and so some more sanding and painting was needed to key the surface.

Surrey Street Market -work in progress- by Matt Bannister

It was brilliant to finish the two designs, and see the transformation from two to three dimensions. I think it was also darkly hilarious that I was working in a former fitness shop. All that getting up and down off the floor certainly put me through a tough work out each day.

A post-creative self portrait was needed when everything was complete.

The buses were installed on the streets of Croydon today (Monday 08/12/14). For more information visit the TFL website but I will be following up this post with more pics and thoughts about how the sculptures have fitted in.