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?

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