Free Play Bar Arcade mural by Sam O. White - Providence, Rhode Island - Murals on Waymarking.com

Classic arcade game characters illustrated by Sam O. White populate a mural at the entrance to Free Play Bar Arcade in downtown Providence, Rhode Island.

Read from left to right, you'll see: Asteroids, Q*bert, Centipede, Mortal Kombat II, and a dozen green, blue, and light red Space Invader Octopodes, Crabs, and Squid in four rows descending over a neon orange planet against a solid black background.

A few words about the artist, from his web site:

I'm into art that comes off the walls. I think of artists such as Blu and Swoon, who both seem to be confronting the state of the environment by creating whole new environments out of their own art. As a viewer, you don't so much look at their art as step inside of it. That's where I want to be. Many of my recent murals creep across ceilings and floors or lurk behind the architecture.

My introduction to large scale mural making came largely through working with the organization Tape Art. The practice of drawing with tape immediately accustoms one to drawing at a 1:1 scale and taps into spatial awareness. I still draw out many of my painted murals in tape first.

My recent murals have had some 8bit styling that I'm drawn to because my natural drawing-style tends to be a bit curvy and all over the place, so imposing a grid on things creates an interesting tension, I found.