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.
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.