GOING FORWARD PHOTONIQUE WILL BE ADVERTISMENT FREE
GOING FORWARD PHOTONIQUE WILL BE ADVERTISMENT FREE
Originally Photographed July 2025
[[shortcode.limerick.0011]] AN EXAMPLE OF STREET ART IN LIMERICK
The Urban Cartographer Presents:
Photographed By William Murphy Using A Fujifilm GFX100RF
I had hoped to photograph the completed work when I re-visited Pa Healey Road in October but my Leica Q3 batteries were exhausted, all three of them, by the time I arrived at Aura Grove Island Leisure Centre.
The Artwork: Officially titled Dragonflies, this piece was completed as part of the Limerick Wildlife Walls trail. Organised in partnership between Draw Out Limerick and the Limerick City and County Council's Biodiversity Office, the project highlights local native species and ecological corridors throughout the city.
The Artist: Painted by street artist and muralist Louise Keeley, working under the moniker Lulu (or Ohhi Uisce). She served as artist-in-residence with Draw Out, creating several celebrated murals across the Wildlife Walls initiative (including subsequent pieces such as the Lesser Horseshoe Bat and Green Hairstreak Butterfly at Island Stores on Island Road).
Location: Curved facade of the Aura Grove Island Leisure Centre, Pa Healy Road, Limerick.
My photographs document a prime mid-process demonstration of the doodle grid (also known as a squiggle grid).
Operational Method
Random Scrawl: Using scrap spray cans or chalk, the muralist marks the unpainted surface with random, high-contrast squiggles, numbers, letters, loops, and geometric shapes.
Calibration Shot: The artist steps back and takes a flat, square-on digital reference photograph of the scribbled surface.
Digital Layering: In digital illustration software (such as Procreate on an iPad), the final vector or raster study is overlaid onto the photograph of the wall with reduced opacity.
Anchor Matching: Operating from the boom lift basket, the artist treats each letter or doodle as a unique visual coordinate. Instead of calculating metric measurements, they follow visual intersections: the wing tip terminates precisely at the apex of the letter ‘B’; the reed contour crosses the crossbar of an ‘A’.
Opaque Blocking: The full-coverage masonry paints, acrylics, and aerosol shades layer over the markings, eradicating the doodles entirely by the time the mural reaches completion.
Curved & Irregular Architectural Geometry: Traditional Cartesian chalk grids break down severely across compound curves, corrugated cladding, or stepped facades, causing parallax distortion. Because the doodle grid is photographed directly on the specific geometry of the building, it automatically compensates for wall curvature without manual trigonometric calculations.
Daylight Independence: Optical digital projectors require deep dusk or night-time conditions to project visible linework. Projecting along active traffic arteries such as Pa Healy Road poses major road-hazard liabilities, requires generator power, and demands antisocial night work. The doodle grid is marked, photographed, and executed in full daylight.
Coordinate Disambiguation: Uniform geometric square grids make it easy to lose count on high-rise cherry pickers, leading to misaligned structural elements by a full square unit. Because every handwritten letter and doodle mark is unique, every square foot of the wall forms its own unmistakable, self-indexing location.
Rapid Deployment: Snapping chalk snap-lines or measuring grids across a four-storey building requires multiple hands and hours of physical staging. A single muralist can coat hundreds of square metres with loose squiggles from a basket in under an hour, calibrate on a tablet, and begin blocking immediately.