Mural Painting

Last week I finished up another project for my beloved Yogawood - a mural on a 36 foot long wall in their Riverton studio. This was in the planning stages for quite some time, and I am so excited to see it finally finished and up on the wall. It was so relaxing to go in to the studio, put on a cd from their yoga-music collection, zone out and just paint (sometimes till 1AM, opps where did the time go??).

But I'm getting ahead of myself....let's go back to the beginning.......

Here was the wall before.

Before I started working, I had a meeting with the owner and studio coordinator, to hear their ideas about the project, what colors they wanted, what design style they were looking for, drink coffee, etc., etc. I took some photos of the studio and started doing research - they wanted native plants, so I went out to some fields and took some photos of plants for reference.

(hey! that's not a plant! Just making sure you're still paying attention..)

From these photos I started making some quick drawings in my sketchbook, then I use tracing paper and ink it before scanning it in the computer.

(yes, I'm a tree hugger, not one inch of my tracing paper shall go unused!)

I drew around 15-20 individual plants, picked some complementary colors, then put them all together to create a few different comps to choose from.

They chose #3, then I was off to the paint store to match colors and buy supplies.

I took a ton of wall measurements, then used my computer to create a grid to help me paint faster and with great accuracy.

(don't ever try to work with your computer on the floor, ouch, my neck was in terrible pain for days)

(can we just pause a moment to acknowledge the fantastic-ness of this grid? It took a lot of brain power for this non-math person to figure out)

I made a separate grid for each color of the mural, then used a projector (awesome!) to show me exactly where to paint.......

(hey guys! it's THE GRID in action! look! look!)

and paint......

 and paint.....

 and stop. 

to mix colors because I WAS NOT happy with the colors straight out of the can. of course.

then paint some more.....

so close!

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(45 minute break for frenzied clean up of a can of paint I accidentally spilled all over the floor, and the wall and my only good pair of yoga pants. do you know how expensive good yoga pants are???)  

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(FYI - YES, I know painting is messy, i was only wearing the yoga pants because I went to a yoga class before painting, otherwise they remain in a locked case in my bedroom.)

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DONE!

(and yes, the yoga pants survived. whew.)

You can view an album with more photos of the studio at my (yeah, just got with the program and created a facebook fan page, welcome to 2007!) HERE :)