How to make a mural/Part 5: Transferring the image

I gotta admit, this next part scared me a little.  Designing something sweet and prepping a mural surface both take a lot of time and work- but both are manageable! Transferring an image  onto a 900 square foot wall- that takes some serious strategy- and math.

You have a few different options when it comes to mural-transfers:

First, there’s the pouncing method. This is the technique Michelangelo used to transfer his full-scale drawings onto the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

First the artist makes a line drawing of their full-scale image on paper. Holes are punched through the paper at  frequent intervals along the drawing. This punched paper outline is then taped to the wall and a charcoal or chalk powder is “pounced” over the holes, forcing the powder through the holes onto the wall. When you remove the paper from the wall you should be left with a series of small dots following the lines of the original drawing which can then be used as guidelines for the painting.

Here are some examples. Quilters seem to use the pouncing method a lot- these examples are from the quilting world:

You can also project your image onto the wall. Old school projectors and transparencies are a good way to go (my fav, even if they do remind me of high school math class):

and even better, digital projectors that work with your computer:

This is a great way to go for smaller scale indoor walls like the one below, but can be problematic for large walls outside (getting far enough away from the wall, having light conditions be dark enough, perspective issues, scaffolding getting in the way of the projection, etc).

Finally, there’s the gridding process. It is an inexpensive, low-tech, time-intensive process, and while it is not as quick as using a projector, it does have the added benefit of helping to improve your drawing and observational skills. A plus for the Apprentices!

In a nutshell, the grid method involves drawing a grid over your reference image, and then drawing a grid of equal ratio on your primed mural surface. Then you draw the image on your  wall, focusing on one square at a time, until the entire image has been transferred.

Here is my team gridding the wall: we marked one-foot increments across the top, bottom and both sides of the wall, then used a snap-line to “draw” the lines across the wall. Annie is at the top holding the chalk line, and each team member below her is handing the line down to the very bottom, where Sydney was holding it in place where it is marked. When the line was in place and pulled tight, each person snapped it at their level of scaffolding.

ohhhh SaNAP!

It was easy to translate my image into a line drawing on the computer.

From there, I took the line drawing into Illustrator and created a grid in the same ratio as the one we had created on the wall. Five-foot sections were printed out on 8.5 x 11 paper.

Apprentices took on one five foot section at a time. Up they went on the scaffolding, using their amazing observation skills to make this 900 square foot image come to life.

Below: Chad and Erika

One square foot at a time! Emily, Sydney and Ke’Monte

Ke’Monte is in the far corner transferring the bunny he designed himself.  This was one of the coolest things about our mural I think.  The apprentices designed, transferred and painted each of their own illustrations. This really gave them a sense of ownership to the project.

It took us two days to completely transfer the image. It was Friday when we finished. The end of the first week in our four week mural process.

So in week one we finished  rough drafts, refined the final image, made a formal mural presentation to the public, cleaned, primed, gridded, and transferred our mural image onto the wall.

And on the 6th day we rested.

How to make a Mural/ Part 4: Tweaking the Final

So when we last left off, the team had just finished preparing the mural surface, and our clients had just picked their favorite mural image:

Here, again is the rough draft:

The next day to give my team a well-deserved break from hard work outdoors, we spent the day in the studio drawing.

This particular image was perfect for our group. As teenagers, my Apprentices were inundated with new pop-cuture design and imagery on a daily basis, through television, shopping experiences at the mall, video games, the internet, and so on. I wanted to use that knowledge to our advantage.

My challenge for them that day was coming up with new design elements that would make our mural POP. The crazier the better. We started brainstorming- playing word association games and writing endless lists of ideas.  Then we got to sketching…

Chad wanted the sun in the upper left hand corner to be a giant sparking diamond:

Emily elaborated on the dessert flowers theme:

Ke’Monte had a couple of characters he wanted to add to this fantasy world:

and Erika thought the central tree figure should become more realistic:

I took these drawings home with me, scanned them into my computer and started to work them into the original design:

Printed the image out, drew on top of it:

Re-scanned, tweaked, added color:

Re-tweaked:

And finally, got someplace I was satisfied:

My team, my clients and my employers all signed off on this draft. THIS is what was going up on the wall!

Then, even though I had a final draft that was ready to go, I painted the whole thing too. I do most of my designing on a computer, and I knew the process of painting this image was going to be different than changing a color with a key command on a computer. Painting it first on a small-scale gave me the opportunity to see what my process might be  like on the big wall.

So how to you get from this to mural size? Read on, my friend!

We interrupt this programming to bring you…

… an update on the photo shoot we’ve been working on! We shoot this coming Saturday – we are excited and nervous all at once! Here is how it unfolded…

It all started about a year ago – one winter night at the Skatin’ Place roller rink in Cincinnati.  Either Allison or I had just gotten over a cold and were touting the amazing benefits of the neti pot. Taking a break from busting out our amazing skating skillz (well, Allison’s skills) we watched skaters roll past, looking so cool in the dark rink under the neon blinking disco lights.  We both agree, skating is one of the coolest things around. You look cool, you feel cool, you can be GOD.

Why then, were neti-pots not so high up on the cool-factor list? They should be, they make you feel incredible! Why did fresh Nike Dunks trump the neti pot? Shouldn’t it be our goal to tell the kids whats really cool? Wellness! Herbal teas! Ancient nasal irrigation methods! Herbology and Aromatherapy! If these  things were all blinged up, with a sweet rap and a bumpin baseline to go with, wouldnt kids WANT to experiment with oil blends and herbal teas?

Earlier that fall we had submitted the piece below in ArtWorks annual “Secret ArtWorks” event.  Thousands of artists from all over the world submit 5X7 images which are sold for $75 each at the annual Secret ArtWorks party/fundraiser. The “secret” is the identity of the artist, which is revealed when the work is sold.

The image we submitted was part of a series, all about the legalization of gay marriage. This was the first photo shoot we did together. We were the designers, directors, makeup artists, set builders, lighting designers, photographers and models for the shoot.  We did everything. It was insane. Totally insane. But the outcome was successful.

About a month ago we got a letter in the mail from ArtWorks inviting us to be part of the EXPOSED 2010 exhibit. The Secret above had been selected as one of the Top 100 works of art at the Secret ArtWorks 2009 event. EXPOSED was the show at ArtWorks that would reveal the identities of the Top 100 Secret Artists.

We had to come up with a new idea, and create an entire photoshoot for EXPOSED. In a month. It took us 4 months to do our wedding shoot. We knew we had to move fast. So we decided to bring Hip-Hop Neti-Pot to life.

It is one of the biggest challenges (and joys), for an artist to take something floating around in the imagination and bring it to life in the physical realm. We can brainstorm all we want – but making the magic come to life- and doing it well- THATS making good art. For us, it is a very spiritual thing too.

Here is our beginning sketch:

In the sketch above, what you have is a DJ in a club-like setting with six arms (a reference to Hindu deities). Half of her arms are doing “hip-hop” things, the other half, doing “asian wellness” things and the third set of hands meditating in the center.  Behind her is a shelf of jars containing herbs, roots and other forms of ancient Chinese medicine.

After doing some research we learned that the neti-pot originated in India and has been practiced for centuries as one of the disciplines of yoga and Ayurvedic medicine.  Originally the wellness element of this shoot was Chinese medicine, but to convey our title “Hip-hop Neti Pot”, we also had to include Eastern Indian cultural references in the piece. So now we had a Hip-hop/Ayurvedic/Chinese-medicine shoot on our hands.

We decided to get the ball rolling by looking for costumes in the “Hip-hop/Ayurvedic/Chinese medicine” vein.

Talk of the Town costume shop on Reading Road is packed wall to wall with enough costume items and accessories to make your head spin. We took a few brainstorming shots, but soon realized that the costume we were looking for probably did not exist, yet. We were going to have to fabricate it ourselves. The trip was not a complete bust, though. Shots like this are always good for brainstorming.

Luckily, the following week, Allison found a sweet enormous purple hoodie with asian print at Plato’s Closet. I was going to make this baby into one fine-looking hip-hop Kimono. Kimonos are Japanese though. So now we have a HipHop / Ancient Chinese/ Eastern Indian / Japanese shoot here…

Here are some early hair experiments. Synthetic baby!

We found this shelf at the antique mall on Dixie Highway

and knew it was the one for our shoot:

We brought it home, along with a couple of sweet vintage lamps, and stood our mannequin in front of it for our first test-shots.

We were starting to get the look we were going for. Back-lighting the shelf was going to be another first for us. We wanted to our jars on the shelf to glow! Allison came up with a sweet design that we would drill, then set christmas lights into.

We enlarged the original design, and Allison drilled hundreds of little holes for hours.

Installing the lights

While Allison was drilling I was working on the jewelry. We wanted the jewelry and hair accessories to make some chakra references, in addition to being blingy bling BLING!

This week we have a lot to do. We shoot on Saturday, and only hope the creative Gods (2Pac, Guanyin, Ganesha, Buddha and Biggie) will be smiling on us. It’s hard to know how it will all look until you shoot, and hopefully all of these items will gel together and we will get the end result we were looking for. Fingers Crossed (all 60 of them)

How to make a mural/part 3: assembling the team and prepping the wall

The ArtWorks program kicked off like it does every year, at the Cincinnati Art Museum. Apprentices, Teaching Artists, and ArtWorks supporters came from all over the great city of Cincinnati to meet each other and learn about the 2010 summer project lineup. I met my Teaching Artist and 5 great teenagers who would make up my team of Apprentices. We took the famous ArtWorks group shot, then all parties were dismissed.

(This is the 2009 crew, not 2010, but you get the idea)

I met the team at our mural site one week later – for the real start of our project.  Our group was small – 7 total, including myself, Annie (my Junior Teacher) Erika (18), Ke’Monte (17), Sydney (14), Chad (15) and Emily (17).  Here we are, as often seen in our studio.

I showed them the wall, we toured the studio, played some getting to know you games, and when all of that took only 15 minutes, we decided to go ahead and just start the mural. I took a picture of the team getting their safety gear on for the first time. It was an exciting moment for all!

(Sunscreen, yall!)

Prepping a mural surface starts with some heavy-duty wall cleaning.  That day we started with the first step of any mural – giving the wall a dry scrub with some wire brushes and all the vim and vigor we had. This is to knock off any loose paint and grit that might be hanging around on the surface.

On day two of our project  we were ready start the next phase of wall cleaning – “TSPing” – aka scrubbing the wall with chemicals. TSP (Tri Sodium Phosphate) is pretty harsh on the skin and can cause nasty chemical burns, so we used all the safety precautions we could think of; goggles dustmasks, gloves, long sleeves and pants and so on. Below is a pretty accurate portrayal of how we all looked that day. After the solution is mixed and scrubbed onto the wall, it is power-washed off.

Now you have yourself a clean surface, ready for priming. My team was excited to start painting on day 3. We got out our rollers, poured our enormous 5-gallon buckets of Nova Color primer into trays and got to work.

(Top: Erika  Bottom: Ke’Monte and Chad)

I gotta tell you, as mural surfaces go- you can’t get much better than ours.  Smooth like buttah. You might notice the panels on the wall.  A lot of people are curious to know if we put those panels up just for our mural. Luckily, the wall had been like that for years. Once upon a time, a building used to occupy the space where the parking lot now is on 12th and Jackson.  This building was demolished and interior brick was exposed on the backside of the Germainia building. Interior brick, unlike exterior brick, doesn’t hold up well againt the elements. These concrete panels were placed on the bottom portion of the building to protect those bricks. Lucky for us it happens to be a gorgeous surface for a mural.

It is unusual and pretty rare to have a surface like this to paint a mural on. I think all of my fellow Project Managers this summer were painting on brick walls- and this is the norm.  When you paint on bricks, you have to take special care to fill in each and every nook and cranny (like english muffins) of the mortar between each brick. This is a painstaking process. There is a term in the mural-painting world when your paint misses the deeper surfaces of brick walls -”holidays”. I am still not sure if this term is used as a noun or verb. Or if it is spelled that way. Either way, it kind of sounds like the opposite of what it is.

(This is not our wall. Whoever painted this had no holidays… or took no holidays? not sure)

Here is our wall, with 2 fresh coats of primer. Bling!

It was this same week, as we were cleaning and priming the wall, that I was coming home every night to wrap up my rough draft ideas for our clients. On the day that my team was TSPing their hearts out, I presented the Kellys their three options. There was one they decided on almost immediately, which spoke to them (and even made them giggle a little) more than the others.

And the winner was…

The “Rainbow-Ice-Cream- Heart-shaped-sunglasses” one! Later to be called Ice Cream Daydream. I was ecstatic.  When my team came in for lunch, I showed them what we were about to create. They were more excited than I was.

And this is when it really got interesting…

How to make a mural/Part 2: Presenting Rough Drafts

I had 2 weeks to come up with 3 original, completely different, and totally awesome mural ideas for my clients.  This post is about those rough draft ideas.

I met with the Kellys, whose style was clear from the amazing interior of Eden Floral Boutique. They had taken this landmark building and turned the interior into something completely contemporary and cool. I took one look at that wallpaper and knew- my clients had STYLE! So I had to bring it.

the wallpaper

Kelly and Kelly

The Kellys suggested I look at Designers Guild and Osbourne and Little for an idea of their color and style preferences. I took their suggestions and started to collect images like the ones below for inspiration. It was also important to them that we represent their business – flowers- in the mural. Kelly Murphy was also a textile designer, and both of them loved exciting patterns. All good things to keep in mind during the initial phases of design!

The first thing I do when I start any kind of design is a ton of visual research. I look through current magazines and books and pick out what I love. My first ideas are photoshopped collages from that research, and their purpose is to start establishing the direction and concept of an image

Below is an example of that. I have a strange obsession with fake nails, and loved the idea of making a mural with some sweet acrylics. I found some other images I was drawn to and put together this image.

When I showed the ArtWorks staff this first concept, they gently steered me in another direction.  Thats ok! Most ideas go through hundreds and hundreds of changes. They were a little creeped out by the nails, but what they did like were the heart-shaped sunglasses, the little machine and the use of pattern. Cest la vie! I don’t think anyone will ever deter me from using acrylics in my own work, but when you think about millions of people seeing the image, its a different subject.

So, taking into consideration what they did like, I redrew, rescanned and re-worked this image. It went through endless versions before the style and concept started to gel.   Here we have a little man machine saying “Hello Gorgeous!” to a rainbow haired girl. This one got the stamp of approval from ArtWorks and I was ready to move on to my next idea

I still wanted to work those heart- shaped sunglasses in somewhere, so in my next design I used them as a main element.  I worked on hundreds of versions of this one too. The Rainbow Ice cream had my heart though, so I fought for it and redesigned over and over until eventually I was satisfied with it.

The third image I worked on seemed to come really fast and naturally. I felt like I had finally hit my stride. The concept collage is below. A girl in a fantasy garden uses her kaleidoscope to look at the moon.

Kittenpants totally loved it too.

After drawing on top of my image, scanning, tweaking, redrawing, and re-tweaking I came up with this:

This was my favorite design.  Actually, the nails mural was my favorite. But this was a close second. I loved how romantic it was.

So these were the finalists. I photoshopped each image onto the wall to help the Kellys get a better idea of how each would really look as a mural.

I was excited to see which one they would pick. I had no idea. Would it be  Hello Gorgeous, Rainbow Ice Cream OR Kaleidoscope Tea Garden?

How to make a mural/Part 1: Location Location Location

I can’t believe its already mid -September! This post starts off a series that is long over-due, all about the journey of making a mural for the first time.

To bring you all up to speed : Last time on DoubleFresh Allison and I had both just quit our jobs to travel up the West Coast for a month. It was a bold move, but we knew our paths had to change – and the timing was right. We were unsure of the outcome, especially in regards to our future incomes.

I got a phone call when we were in Las Vegas from ArtWorks, where I had just left my administrative position a few weeks earlier. They knew I wanted to start my career as an artist and they were calling to see if i would lead  a mural for the upcoming summer program. I was shocked, excited, and thankful.  I got this photo and I knew for sure – I had definetly made the right decision.

This is my wall. It is on the backside of the historic Germainia building and is located on the corner of Jackson and 12th streets in Cincinnati’s rapidly growing arts district called the Gateway Quarter. The Quarter is situated between Over the Rhine and Downtown and is home to ArtWorks’ and Fine Arts Fund’s new offices, Know Theater, the Art Academy, and great shops like Park & Vine and The Little Mahatma. Its one of my favorite parts of the city.

I went to go see my wall the day we landed back in Cincinnati. This is a small wall for an ArtWorks project -in fact it was the smallest wall of the summer -sizing up at 900 sq feet. By comparison the largest wall this summer was at least four times the size of mine.  Tina Westerkamp led that massive project in Covington Kentucky (Ironically we were the last ones to finish our murals, on the same day)

(Tina’s wall in Covington)

I was standing in front of my wall for the first time, and what looked manageable on the tiny screen of my iphone from miles away, looked like a total beast in person.  The Germania Building is not just any other building, either. It is a gorgeous historic landmark built in 1877 as a monument to the German immigrants who were hugely significant in Cincinnati’s formation. The building’s style is an example of Renaissance Revival, and is one of the most ornate in the city. On the second floor front is a statue named Germania, who symbolizes German culture and spirit.

While I was still on the other side of the country, ArtWorks met with Kelly Dragoo and Kelly Murphy, owners of the Germaina Building and of Eden Floral Boutique, the business on the first floor of the building.  The Kellys would be my clients, so it was up to me to paint them a mural that they would absolutely love.

Part of the success of this project was due to ArtWorks pairing their clients with an artist who could execute the kind of imagery and style they were looking for. The Kellys told us they wanted something edgy, fun, hip and colorful. I was thankful they were thinking along these lines, becuase I know I certainly was.

We landed back in Cincinnati, and I hit the ground running. I had two weeks to come up with the very best mural designs I knew how…