Any advice for mural paintings?
-
About a week ago I did some volunteer painting for a local organization called Connor's Hero's. They raise money for kids cancer treatment. It was a fun project where 20 artists came together and we painted a bunch of these 8ft wooden boards that were cut out in the shapes of fish.
I like painting ridiculous looking fish faces so I thought it would be a little day project. The event was at a brewery so the free beer was awesome too. But what I didn't really realize was that these fish paintings were going to be judged and the winner would get a spot painting a big mural during this years street art festival.
To my surprise I was voted the winner. I'm super stoked to have this opportunity to leave my mark on the city. But I have no experience painting on this large of a scale and in front of a crowd. I've got two weeks to prepare and i'm not really sure where to even start. Does anyone have any advise on how to handle this? I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed.Thanks!
-
Figure out what you are painting beforehand, paint it small. For the actual mural use large brushes and lots of paint on them. Stand back to see how you are doing often. Good luck!
-
I did four large scale projects in my life - but not in front of a crowd and in what, I guess, is a limited time frame! If you have no prescriptions on how to do it, I would suggest to use stencils and spray cans. You can spend the a week designing the work, then divide it into color shapes and create stencils for them (out of thick paper or acetate sheets - the acetate is better because it is transparent. I used the acetate sheets sold for overhead projectors and stitched them together with cello tape to make larger sheets). You can fix the stencils to the wall with double-sided tape and spray the shapes. In this way you get the whole layout and base color sorted out very quickly and without the need to scale the drawing by hand (which is really tricky on large size work).Then you can use normal paint and brush to do all the details and finish it up.
It´s just one possible way, of course - it´s how I did it. -
not sure if this helps, but I painted a sign once on a wall and drew a grid on the wall to assist in transferring the design to the larger area.
-
https://www.youtube.com/user/muraljoe
this guy is a great mural painter and a very good artist I watch a lot of videos
