Safari Mural Process and Completion!

This is a little late in the posting, but I wanted to share a quick little stop-motion I recorded during the install of the Safari Nursery mural. Everything is a printed vinyl transfer apart from the vines, which were penciled and then painted on with acrylic. The install took all day but moved along swiftly thanks to all the help from my boyfriend Mark Oliver The process was a lot of fun and something I hope to continue in the future for large-format projects. (Music clip is "One Heavy February" by Architecture in Helsinki)

Safari Mural

I've been working on a mural project while I've been home in Michigan for a couple of weeks, and this time around I experimented with a slightly different approach. All of the murals I've done thus far have been abstract compositions painted directly onto the wall using semigloss interior paint. For the safari nursery project, I decided to go a different route and do large vinyl print-outs of ink and photoshop illustrations, with some details being painted directly on the wall (such as the vines) Here is a sampling of the work I sent out for print. (The monkeys were part of the original design but will not be included in the final installation)

Loose Color Sketch for Mural

So I never did post the first mural I finished in the basement over a year ago, so hopefully I'll get some pics of that this week to post. It's very tricky to get a good photo, since it's in a long, skinny hallway with dim lighting. Hmmm. Anyway, here is a very loose color sketch of the mural I am starting this week--the colors may vary slightly, but you get the general idea. My parents (who commissioned the mural) wanted something with greens, resemble an abstract forest, with echoes of the arts and crafts style. This is my own take on the abstract, and has similar themes to my first mural (which I will post later) especially the contrast between swooping arcs and straight lines. The colors are taken from a William Morris wallpaper design, "Arbutus." The final mural will measure just over 6 x 9 feet.

Sketches for Elijah

The Blue Lake International Youth Symphony and Choir is performing Mendelssohn's Elijah this summer at Hill Auditorium in Ann Arbor, and Carol Tice (the art director at Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp) commissioned me to sketch up some mural ideas. Three panels featuring scenes/themes from the Old Testament story of the prophet Elijah will be painted by youth in the Ann Arbor area and displayed for the musical performance. I attended BLFAC for camp as a middle schooler, and worked as a counselor this past summer, so this project has a special meaning to me. The colors and compositions are of course subject to change--while I may be getting back to Michigan in time to help the kids paint, it's likely these sketches will serve more as a guideline for inspiration rather than a rigid map for the murals. I also have versions of these sketches with embellished borders featuring patterns and images, but personally I feel like they clutter the composition too much. I'm giving both versions to Carol and letting her make the call.

For those who are unfamiliar with the story of Elijah, in the panels I've illustrated a few major scenes of his time on Earth: the first shows Elijah being fed by ravens when there is a drought in the land of Isreal following Elijah's confrontation with King Ahab regarding the worship of both God and the idol Baal. The second panel is the depiction of the "face-off" between Elijah and Ahab to reveal the true God (both make sacrifices to their gods but only Elijah's altar is consumed in fire from the heavens. After this the drought ends, and a series of other events happen before Elijah ascends into heaven on a chariot of fire (last panel, also my favorite of the three)

I'm still working on the superhero pieces; the coloring is taking longer than expected. Also it's the first week of school and my professors have wasted no time piling on the homework!

The Drawbacks of Being a Procrastinating Perfectionist

So I've been working on a mural in the basement for quite some time now. My mother commissioned me to do a sort of "Arts and Crafts/Mission Style" piece about 2 months ago.  She has a tile from Motawi Tileworks that she really likes so I decided on using that for my inspiration.  Realistically I should have finished the whole thing in 10 days if I was really putting in the 2+ hours a day that would be perfectly reasonable for a project like that.  But no.  And now I've been trying to get it done before the construction workers come by next week.  Cement wall + bad adhesion + primer + paint = well, bad adhesion.  Crisp lines are essential for this style and with the painters tape pulling off little flakes of paint each time I use it, I've had to abandon that method and try several others, none of which are working.  So I've resorted to correcting the edges freehand, which is difficult considering I'm 5'4 and working on a 6+ foot high mural on a 9 foot high wall.  You just can't get the greatest continuity of line balancing on a step stool with a can of paint in one hand and a foam sponge in the other.  Alas, here I am--pulling out my hair and trying to come out with an end result I won't despise.  I'll post a photo when it's finally finished.