Mural Painting



Plan: Small scale painting of a photograph by David Shaw of a palestinian boy throwing a stone at the Isreali army.  

 

Plan: Small scale drawing of a photograph I took of a crazy monsoon in India.

 How to make a Fresco (from the latin meaning fresh) Mural:

1. Remove the previous mural from the wall using a pick axe. Being careful only to take off the plaster and not bits of the wall below.

2. Wash the wall with a power washer then hoover the water up with a water hoover.

3. Fill in any deep holes in the wall with plaster (lime, sand and water mixed together).

4. Project your design on the wall using an over head projector. Drawing it out with a light pigment colour.

5. Plaster over only the part of the wall that you are ready to paint. With fresco painting (like what Michelangelo did) you have to paint the wall within the four hours it taked for the newly plastered wall to dry. The paint (pigament and water) binds with the wet plaster making it a durable and lasting painting. Make sure you have mixed your paint before you start and you have enough of it. Remember the paint drys 50% lighter.





Tuk



Ben

Its harder than I thought to make a fresco. The time limit means you have to work quickly and you cant correct any mistakes after it has dried. The paints are hard to blend on the wall meaning you have to work more with block colours. If paint drips onto other parts of the mural then you have to gauge out the plaster with the drip on, if you try and wipe it you are left with a dirty smudge.

This project has made me think a lot more about scale. What looks good on a small piece of paper may not be so good on large scale. Details and small marks are clearly visible on a 3mx3m wall and if you do them badly it is obvious whereas they would have gone unnoticed before. I dont really like my mural that much I think the image I chose looks better as a photograph or as a small painting. I thought that it was important for a mural to have some kind of political significance as many people would see it and why else make something so big if not to influence the viewer. Im not sure its really clear whats going on in my mural. It could be any boy and any army anywhere. There is nothing to suggest its in Palestine. But now I know exactly how to a fresco, and how to plaster a wall. I want to do some murals in Madrid- but maybe I wont use the fresco techinique its a bit long winded and old fashioned.

Some examples of murals from around the studio



Being taught about pigments

The first half of my mural which took 6 hours of solid painting.

The second half of my mural being painted with help from my group. You can see how light the paint on the top half has dried in comparison with the picture above.

this is me and my lovely group