Starting the Ryton Mural- Commercial Project

A few months ago I worked on a mural for Ryton School. After a few amendments (discussed in a previous post), I was excited to find out that my mural was chosen by the children. It was selected before Christmas so since then we've been planning time to paint it and decided that this week would be a good opportunity to go. Before starting on the painting we had to paint the container grey to provide a neutral base layer for sketching out the composition. 

During the first visit, I realised that the container was a lot bigger than the illustration I'd drawn, so there was the option to stretch the landscape or to add more to the sides. By stretching it, it would have obscured the image and taken up a lot more spray-paint so I decided the best solution was to redo the artwork. On Photoshop I was able to use the original as a base then sketch new areas on the sides with different animals and a pond to add more interest in the foreground. While this was quite time consuming, I feel like the new elements make the composition more interesting and add more characters for the children to find. It also allowed me to add more colour with the fox and frog helping to add continuity through the design. 

Finished mural

Process of adding more to the sides, extending the mural to fit the container

The Next Week- Scaling up the drawing and base layer painting

Once the container was painted grey, we came back the next week to work on the drawing. It was good to have Dan, a professional spray painter and Dave my tutor to work on the mural as they had more experience. Together they started marking out the bigger shapes and the horizon lines which were at slightly different heights, helping to frame the image and bring the edges round to tie in with the surrounding environment. This process didn't take too long as I was able to direct them with printouts of my drawing so we could start from a good foundation. Next, we worked on blocking in the bigger shapes like the trees, rocks and foreground bushes. While this was a good way to judge where everything else went, the size of the container meant that features were more spaced out so some of the layering techniques that created interest in my original drawing were lost. This was a challenge as I wanted it to be as close to my drawing as possible, but I had to improvise with areas in the middle to fill up space. 

As the clouds rolled in, it was a race to get the ground colour put in. We managed to do the lightest green areas, providing a base for everything to layer on top of. From here we decided to call it a day as it wouldn't be possible to paint in the rain- and the hot chocolate was starting to wear off! In the next post, I will show the colouring process and finished mural!

Blocking out the bigger shapes and horizon line

A rough guide for us to start painting, this was a good way to see how everything worked when scaled up and which areas needed more detail

Learning how to get different pressures by holding the can differently

Me playing art director

Blocking in the lightest green colour as a base layer

Targets for next painting session:

• Start on the bigger features like the rocks and trees, adding detail with the stripes and shadows then cutting back into it with the lighter green to tidy up any edges.
• Learn more about how to achieve line weights and clean lines in spraypaint, slowly working up to the job of linework!
• Work out how to fill new spaces in the middle with bushes, possibly look at altering my drawing based on the new layout- could make foreground plants bigger to fill more space and add the layering.
• Document further progress into a blog post, taking pictures as I go.
• Post progress on social media to show a different side to my work. I could tag the school to reach a different audience.