Mural, Day Three

The hardest part about this mural is the wind! It makes the photos flap around, my hair flies in my face, and the palette and brushes dry out Very Fast. Wow, this is a windy location! The other surprising thing is that no matter how many days I have worked on it, I always think “2 more days”. More will be revealed. . .

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Alta is patched and repainted a bit.

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 It is actually further along than this, but I had to take the photo before the mulberry tree shadow reached the image.

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Today I taped off the edges in order to decrease the hassles. Good policy, don’t you think? One should always decrease hassles if given the chance! (Once again, the color is not accurate in the photo – a field trip is recommended.)

Inquiring minds. . .

. . . like to know! Cousin Maggie asked me some great questions about mural painting and indicated that others probably are wondering the same things. So, here we go on a mural tutorial!

  1. PAINT:  Acrylic paint by a company called Nova Color is the paint preferred, no, REQUIRED by the Exeter Mural Team. It is highly pigmented so that it resists fading, and I have chosen the primary colors with the highest lightfast ratings for my mural. In addition to the primaries, I chose Burnt Umber for use on the sepia toned “postcards”.
  2. BRUSHES: Nadi Spencer is very very good at murals and she does the entire thing with a very small cheap brush. Steven Ball is very very good at murals and he said, “Brushes don’t matter”. Say what?? So far I have used a 1-1/2″ brush from the hardware store and a smallish stiff round brush that I might have had since college for most of my murals (all three of them!) I use a few others too, and have to keep reminding myself to choose the largest ones possible in order to keep up the pace.
  3. PERSPECTIVE: Because the shapes are projected and traced, the sizes are correct. I paint up close for awhile, then I back up and see if it is right. It usually needs a little tweaking, but not much.
  4. WEATHERING: The paints are lightfast but murals do fade, depending on the exposure. Northern ones last the longest, Southern ones fade the fastest. Bummer, mine faces south. When I was on the Mural Team, our consultant advised against coating the murals for several reasons. Now I think there are new materials available, but this is the Mural Team’s part, not mine.  Because the project started in 1996, they have rehired artists to refresh their faded murals.
  5. HELP: I can get help for the first layers that just need to be covered in paint. (Someone suggested putting numbers in the spaces like a paint-by-number!) The parts that require detail and my style can only be done by me, as per my contract.
  6. SCAFFOLDING: It is heavy, but once I get used to how it works, I can probably move it. And there are very nice strong men working in the building who helped me on Wednesday.

Projection

First published in January 2009

Remember overhead projectors? That is the device we hope to use to project the image on the wall. I spent 4-1/2 hours tracing the model painting of the mural onto a roll of tissue paper (the kind called “flimsy” by architects). Today I found back-up bulbs for the projector, bought a couple of boxes of magic markers, and had my tracing converted to a series of 10 transparencies. outline.jpgThe projection takes place after dark with lots of people manning Magic Markers. The process ensures that the mural will match the model painting that has been approved. The model painting is called a “maquette”, which actually means a 3 dimensional model, but we don’t have an adequate word for a 2 dimensional model. The Mural Team requires an accurate to-scale painting before giving the go-ahead to an artist, and the artist is supposed to follow that maquette to a tee!

On my previous murals, I simply drew a small to-scale sketch and then marked off the centers of the painting surface and began drawing with my paintbrush. I thought 80″ x 80″ was huge.

Next, the Seatrain (20′ x 8′) was stunningly massive.

Finally I began the one on 6 4’x8′ panels and could hardly grasp the grandeur of it all. (Silly girl, Trix are for kids!) That one on panels was difficult because the design process hadn’t been fully solved before attempting the panels.

The Mural Team of Exeter has much experience (2 dozen or so murals since 1996) and knows that the design process has to be completed and adhered to in order to have any sort of control over their outdoor gallery. (I fully agree with this because I was the President of the Mural Team when we put these rules into place.)