How to Paint a Mural- Step Three- Learning to Blend

Got to spend about another 4 hours on this late last night.

Here's the original concept drawing, for the 8' x 8' wall. I've inverted the corner lines to better show how it's supposed to fit into its new home. Not bad. Close, but I like how there are changes that occur along the way. The concept is just a plan, IMO.

I'm learning how to blend "on the canvas" better, bit by bit.  No better way to learn than doing, IMO.  So, some mistakes along the way, but I'm having a good time.  Repainted the darker sections of the sky on the ceiling (lightening them up), then expanded things outwards.  Now, we've got clouds up above, and the sky wraps around to the left (past the corner, to the window) and to the right (all the way to the corner with the door).  I didn't intend to make this so big.  It's sort of "growing in the telling" as novelists sometimes say.  It just seemed odd to keep the original dimensions and composition, now that it was on a differently sized wall.

So, current dimensions (wrapping around the corner on the left as part of the width, and including the ceiling as part of the height) are 16' long and 12' high.  BIG!  .... but fun too!  :D

How to Paint a Mural- Step Two- Getting Paint on the Wall

Well, I started my new mural a few weeks ago, and it's been very slow going since. Including the sketching on the wall, I'm about 8 hours in.

I've been blocking in shapes, and learning to blend "on the canvas".  I thought it an opportunity to play with Acrylics in a way that was different than what I might do when layering watercolors, so that's been the approach, to varying degrees of success. I figure first things first, I just need to get paint on the wall, and go from there.

Definitely, the image is growing as we go, as I'm wrapping around the corner on the left (and am going to do so more), and creeping up and around the ceiling too.  Anyways, it's fun, and I'm glad I'm getting going again.  I'm learning lots as I go along!

How to Paint a Mural- Step One- Concept Drawing

I'm starting a new mural in my bedroom, and I thought I'd share a bit about my process, so far.  This image is the end of the preliminary steps.

Since I design gardens with people for a living, I think I've approached painting a mural in much the same way-- this usually means brain storming first with the client, asking for them to educate me about what the find desirable, making bubble diagrams and such, and then building the design together, step by step.  Because this new mural is going to be in my bedroom, and it's not just my bedroom, this time things were much more like my landscape design experiences.

March-
So, that means I first started by drumming up lots of ideas on google, and then sharing them with Kat. The goal wasn't to find "the picture" we wanted to copy, but to facilitate a conversation about the image she had hiding in her head so that I could draw it out into the open and make it shared. The purpose is really to create a shared visual vocabulary so that someone else who can't draw can really talk to me about what they want.  She vetoed a lot of stuff, which is half of the reason I show pics.  She liked parts of other images.  We talked about color, and composition, the position of the camera, how much sky there was.  All kinds of stuff.  Then I put it all away, and life got busy.

April-
I then took this info with me, and those pics that she most liked, and I went away and drew up a composite sketch, taking a little from this, a little from that, plus adding some of my own.  It's just an idea, and all ideas are fluid, so nothing is set in stone, but this image (which she loved- yeah!) in conjunction with the google photos we liked, will be the generative beginning of the painting-- which changes as it goes along, of course.  It's still art, and I'm not a copy machine!  :)  It's meant to be interpretive.  The good news is we all know we're basically on the same page from the get go, and that makes for happy wifeys!

May-
Presumably, I'll start painting.  Yikes.

Poetry- Weight

I wrote this last month and wanted to share it.  It's been a long quite winter in regards to poetry, after such a flurry in the summer and early fall.  Lots of painting though.  :)

Weight

I know you want to do something true, honest.

That you want to make beautiful things, as real as a boot

falling from a chair,

or a bullet of resin embracing a pinecone, or a vase being filled with water,

but I would ask you

to wait, to not try and be

a vase filling up with water, to not

try and be resin sticking to a finger, to not

try and make a boot be supple.

To float a bit, to be at ease

with not-waiting.

Don’t worry.  The words will come.

And the words will give you weight.