How To Paint a Mural
Book 1, The Basics - Full Book
Doug Myerscough
Introduction
I know many come to this page directly from a search engine, however many of the murals discussed are actually seen on other pages - I will try to post most on the "home" page - if you scroll down that page and click on any image, you can see it larger and navigate forward and back from the enlarged images. I get a lot of mail from artists, do-it-your-selfers, and youngsters who would like to know the process of painting a mural, what materials to use, what technique is used for maintaining accurate proportion on a large scale, what the mural business is like etc. I should preface by saying that there are as many ways to paint a mural as there are muralists. It reinvents itself somewhat every time because there are always little problems you'll run into that you've never had before. The methods described are by no means the only way to paint murals, simply the methods that have worked best for me. The first part is mostly a bit of background on myself, a bit about what the actual business of painting murals is like, and some personal history. If you just want to learn how to blow up a drawing to mural size, or get some specific info on paints, or other questions, you can skip on down to those parts any time.
When I began painting murals I could find very little written on the subject of techniques used in painting murals, and what I could find was often very academic, obtuse, and largely useless. I will make every attempt to make it as simple as possible. I will focus on realism, because that is by far the most often requested style for a muralist. The same techniques I use to paint giant wall murals also work to paint hyper-realism on canvas, where the level of detail far exceeds that of a camera. I am writing this little "how to" book with the hope that no one ever need repeat my idiotic blunders. If there is ever a twelve step program for artistic idiots, I'll be a founding member. Almost everyone can learn from their own mistakes, the wisest learn from the mistakes of others. I'm keeping it as brief as possible while still giving the info you need to get started. I'll write a more detailed "how-to" book at some point, but this book will cover the most important things in a simple way. I started to write the more detailed book as a first book but realized the important points were getting lost in the flood of secondary technical information, which was really a boring read, and included far more information than was really needed. Nothing that isn't read is going to do any good. I'll eventually figure out how to make the more technical manual of mural painting entertaining, so by all means, read the second book also someday when I finish it, but expect no new epiphanies. It will delve into paints, equipment, step by step beginning to end murals, and special situations much more deeply than the scope of this book allows, as well as the information contained in this book. This book is like the fast food version of a nine course meal, but it's free and filling. I promise to keep it as short as possible. This book is based on many years of questions from many artists who have emailed me asking questions.
I am not going to try to teach anyone to draw or paint other than to say: "Keep at it until it looks right, and don't worry about how long your first few murals take." This is written primarily for artists who have the skills and would like to know how to use them on a larger scale, as well as those who are just curious about how it is done. I am not going to give business advice, because I am not a businessman - my advice in that area would be less than worthless.
Any painting techniques I describe are only those that differ from small scale painting. For anyone who just wants to learn how to scale up designs to mural size, this is a good place to skip ahead to the section titled "Scaling a design to mural size". I'm going to blither on about myself for a few pages - a few choice experiences and things to avoid. There may be a real danger of falling asleep and hurting your head on the keyboard or falling out of the chair and dropping your kindle, so don't feel obliged to read it.
Chapter 1 - My first gig - you gain confidence from success, but you learn more from failure
Other than a small mural I painted on the wall of my bedroom which was only about 6'x8' when I was about twelve, which turned out OK and gave me confidence, the first mural I painted for actual money (only a few dollars after the cost of the paint) in the mid 1970's was, well, to say it was "lousy" would be an insult to lousy paintings everywhere. Everything was out of proportion. The painting looked great from three feet away, but from the 25 foot distance (the closest distance that anyone ever viewed the painting) it looked strange and disproportionate. I was lost in detail and not seeing the overall design as I painted. With the confidence of a sixteen year old who was convinced he was invincible, brilliant, and the finest thing to hit the planet since buttered bread, I had not drawn or even thought about the design, I just started painting, knowing it would be a masterpiece that people would travel from all over the world to see, and museums would fight over who got to build a new wing to house it after the building was taken down.
Thankfully it was a quick, temporary mural done with cheap house paint (not to mention - almost free) painted to dress up a condemned building until it could be torn down. The building was leveled a year later, destroying the evidence. All photographs have since been conveniently lost. My first real professional mural stank (kindest possible word), but I loved painting it and to my surprise, most thought it was distorted on purpose, there was a certain odd consistency in distortion and the colors and painting style were advanced enough to look like it may have been done on purpose. Most thought I'd used artistic license and it must have a nebulous "higher meaning" only comprehensible to an educated few, a bold statement on the pressures of impending reality distorting the idealism of youth. I got a real kick out of the explanations of those who thought they understood. Of course I never told them it was distorted because I didn't have a clue what I was doing - I think that would have broken some unwritten artists code. Only one person ever looked at the painting and knew why it was the way it was. A nice old guy who had been a billboard artist all of his life (people actually use to hand paint billboards!) hit the nail on the head when he said, "Yup, never backed up once while you were paintin' it, did ya?" I learned a lot about what not to do.
Painting a mural is much different from painting smaller works. A person is completely overwhelmed and absorbed by the painting itself. You are too close to see what you are doing while you are painting and it tends to make you want to do stupid things. You have to spend a great deal of time walking, or even driving away to see the work from the distance it will be viewed. I know of one muralist who takes a motor scooter with him, since he does mostly barns that are viewed from roads that are sometimes a quarter mile or more away. Some things are viewed mostly by people driving by at 70 miles per hour at a distance no closer than 200 feet. You have to ask yourself a few questions.
*What good is fine detail a foot off of the ground and far away from the focal point going to do anyone? Probably none.
*How many people will ever even know it's there, if anyone? Same answer
*Did you just waste hours painting details that make no difference at the viewing distance? The answer to this one is often YES! And worse yet, if you don't paint it out, you may have to do the same level of detail on all of the rest of the painting if it pulls the eye from where it needs to go. If you get mired in detail in an unimportant section for your own gratification, you are wasting time, paint, and money. Spend your time on the area where the eye of the viewer lands first, and less time successively on areas that are secondary or tertiary. If you had a great idea for that section, use it later in a different painting as the subject. There are some tricks to leading the eye where you want it to go that I will get into below.
*Does your design hold up at 70mph from a few hundred yards with a viewing time of about 4 seconds? For things that have a short viewing time, keep the design simple - not simple minded, just uncomplicated.
*If you had never seen it before - is it memorable? That's a biggy. Sometimes things don't hit you the same way large as they do small. If a design isn't working, what can you do to fix it? Very often, the design itself is somewhat dictated to you by the client, you have to try to find any way you can to make a bad idea look good. The second you realize something isn't working, you need to find a way to fix it. If the change is minor, just do it. If it is major, you may have to get permission to make a major change. Sometimes, the client is so sold on their own idea, they won't let you change. In that case, you can make the color surreal or impressionistic. Wild color can take peoples minds off the fact that the idea of the painting is mundane and make the painting pop. Don't use it as a crutch, it gets old quick. If you paint a lot in the same area, people will stop hiring you if you do that too much, because then they start to identify you with it and think it's all you can do.
*What can you do to make this better? Would more detail at the focal point make a difference at this distance? Most of the time it will, because that is where people are looking. For example, if you have a freakishly realistic eye, painted into a mural that is otherwise not highly detailed, and that eye is the focal point, the detail at that point will make the viewer feel that the whole painting is highly detailed because that is the section they saw most as they drove past.
*How can I better lead the viewers eye where I want it to go? There are a few answers to this.
!!!Remember this; The eye usually goes first to the area of highest contrast.
It is simply the way the human mind works. Study a little about how humans perceive things and it will carry you a long way. This can be color contrast with strong complimentary colors, value contrast with light against dark, detail contrast, loose painting around an area of high detailed hyper-realism can be very effective. Lines leading to the focal point can also be effective but sometimes impossible to incorporate. Combinations of all of these can be startling. If you want to lead the viewers eye, which you definitely do, think long and hard about this. There are a million great things that can come from just this one thought.
You want to lead the eye to the point where you pour the blood, sweat and tears of your painting. In a painting of two gorillas fighting in the jungle that will get an average viewing time of 30 seconds, a perfectly rendered parrot in a tree in the background is not going to help, and may well make things worse by distracting the eye, but making those angry gorillas jump off the wall with contrast and detail will increase the average viewing time by transfixing the viewer- in the case of fighting gorillas, (an idea just pulled squarely out of my backside, the source of all of my ideas) a little clear white slobber flying out of a mouth (yes, it's gross) against a nearly black background in a rough line that leads generally toward the face of the fiercest looking gorilla, the whites of whose eyes are pink and red with anger with white highlights against dark green eyes (complimentary colors), almost black irises (high value contrast), might lead the eye to where you want it to go. Your goal is to force the viewer inside the painting whenever you have a chance. Try to close your eyes and see that in your minds eye, build your own design around it, perhaps with a foggy background and the gorillas so close they feel almost like a danger to you - change things around - try to come up with even stronger ways to enhance it. That isn't a subtle example, but this idea carries down to the most intimate and subtle paintings, "look here first, then there, then there" all done with successive levels of one or another type of contrast with what I term the contrast hierarchy. If you take the time to think it through and execute it right, you can tell an entire story in a single painting and have most people instantly understand without beating them over the head. The great masters were no strangers to this idea, but it seems to have been lost through so many years of abstraction and pop culture. Some painters do it without even knowing they do it I suspect. Look at a few of your favorite paintings with this in mind - see where your eye goes first, next, next... Do you see something emerging that you may have never seen before?
Chapter 2 - The Big Art Thing
Much like those who do large scale sculpture who I've talked with, the scale of mural work makes me think of myself more a craftsman than an artist most of the time. Painting a mural exists somewhere between fine art and house painting. It's hard to get too snooty when you're up four stories on a scaffold with the wind blowing twenty five miles per hour, covered in paint and eating lunch out of a paper bag because it started to rain and if you try to climb down, the wet scaffold will shake so much you might end up as a stain on the sidewalk. But of course if lightning starts, you have no choice but to climb down anyway because you are essentially standing on a lightning rod.
The biggest plus to being a muralist has been the quality and diversity of people I have met along the way. Many of those I now count as my best friends were my customers first - in fact, I first met my wife while painting a public mural, and she commissioned two pieces before we started dating (who says good customers don't get preferential treatment!) Those who commission art are most often extremely intelligent people with a true love for the arts and at least some tolerance for the eccentricities of artists. I would never have met such a fine and varied group in any other walk of life.
Artist tend to get a lot more respect than those in many other professions. Whether we actually deserve it or not is anyone's guess, but I am most often treated deferentially by my clients. A good friend of mine who is a building contractor once pointed out when we had been doing work for the same people who were remodeling a house, that they treated me like a Greek God who could hang the moon, and treated him like the redheaded step child. I hadn't noticed until he brought it up, but he was right. It isn't fair. He deserved the same respect I have taken for granted for most of my life. I suspect it has something to do with the fact that everyone assumes they could learn to build or remodel a house, but many people think there is some gift that artists have, that they could never have. They assume that my abilities come from above, and his come from shop class. It isn't true of course, but artists have been playing on it since at least the dark ages.
I learned to draw and paint when I was fairly young, and have continued to improve as I've gotten older. My early work was no better than any other kid, but I am a quick learner and it wasn't long before I had surpassed most of my peers on the technical end of the craft, but only because I did it a lot, so they all tend to remember me as the kid who could always draw and play music. They don't remember, or more likely never saw, the scribbles I drew when I was three, which looked like any other fairly bright three year olds' drawings. The difference is that I spent a lot of time drawing and playing music when they were out playing on the jungle gym because I was only allowed certain activities when I was very young, art and music were two of them.
In the minus column (and this is nothing compared to the good stuff, even though this section will be longer because I've learned more from these things, and nobody wants to read about happy stuff, everyone wants dirt, as long as it isn't happening to them) although I'm seldom asked to paint anything about which I can't find something to like, I don't often get to paint the designs I would like to paint. Clients who let you paint whatever you think works best are rare and to be cherished, possibly worshiped. I have one such set of clients - they own more of my work than any 10 others combined, and own some of my very best work. They are free spirits who let me have fun, and seldom have anything specific in mind. Most clients on the other hand, often have very specific designs or subjects they would like to have painted and the ideas are sometimes tasteless, cliche or awkward. I have to bite my tongue and make suggestions in a nice way using word substitution about "minor modifications" (enormous changes) to their there overall "wonderful" (hideous) "idea" (brain fart) that might "tweak" (pull it screaming from the toilet) it just a "tiny bit" (enormously). If I were paying my hard earned money to someone I didn't know to paint a mural, I would darn well want them to paint what I wanted to have on my wall, but I usually know when it's best to just let the damn plumber fix the pipe the way he thinks will work best. It is my job to make sure that what they think they want turns out a lot better than the actual idea, because if I actually painted the original idea, it would not be long before they've tired of the painting or become embarrassed by it when all of their friends have damned it with faint praise or outright hated it. If their friends don't like it, they blame the artist, not the owner of the painting and you will never get a referral from it. There are times when the client insists, and you just have to grin and bear it. There has to be at least one level hidden in every great painting, layers of thought that set themselves subliminally and make people want to look at the painting again, many designs don't allow it. But that's a discussion for another book.
Every once in a while, a real trend emerges, like the Tuscan vineyard landscape with trompe l'eoil archways in the foreground that started in the early 1990's at some little Italian restaurant and lasted WAY too long. For a while, everyone will want the same painting. Some things simply strike a chord in people. They will see something in a magazine that they like and before you know it, like a tsunami, you are getting one call after another to do variations of the same thing on 50 different peoples wall. There are only so many variations on a theme you can paint before it starts to feel like factory work, but if that is the only work you can get, it beats starving. One positive on doing similar works one after another is that it really does get streamlined quite a bit. A painting that might take a week the first time, will only take three days by the fifth time. Done often enough, you will seem like a magician because you'll be in and out in a day or two, although the price is the same as it was the first time. If you are simply in it for the money, this is the way to make a lot of it, right up until the time when it goes completely out of style, and it's the only style for which you have become known. Neo-classical painting is something of an exception to that rule. Certain classical themes will always be a constant; cherubs in the clouds on a ceiling, or copies of Michelangelo's "The Creation of Adam" and similar famous paintings are things on which some people build entire careers. I've done them all, as have many, but I hate to repeat myself, so now I send those jobs to a person still willing to do them, and will continue to do so unless I have no other, more interesting work pending.
I try to get a feel for the clients likes, dislikes, and design something that fits them. I never take a client I truly dislike, or who treats me with any less respect they would treat a friend no matter how much money they have. Life is too short to spend weeks or even months being uncomfortable, and trying to produce beauty for someone you don't feel deserves it. You may see these people every day for however long the job takes and it will take a heavy toll if you are unhappy. I would rather do ten paintings for deserving peasants than one for a rich prick.
Chapter 3 - The Nightmare Job
I have had only one 100% bad experience painting a mural. I was hired to paint a huge fantasy children playroom above a six car garage that was attached to the second floor of the enormous main house which was still under construction. The clients were a professional couple, he was an MD in neurology, she was an attorney. They were referrals and said I had a free hand to do whatever I thought right, a price was set and a design was approved. I told them how long I had to get the job done and they were fine with it, they wouldn't insist on any changes that would run me over. I trusted them. Since I knew the money was certainly no problem for them, I didn't get a deposit, the agreement was verbal. Everything had been negotiated long distance, they were a couple of states away.
My first hint that something was amiss was when I arrived on the job the first day and I noticed the painting crew who were painting the main interior walls were agitated. They saw me pulling my equipment out of my van and one of them shouted "I hope you're on time and materials." Never a good sign! I told them I had quoted a full price for the job and they just shook their head. I asked what was going on and they told me that the women was having them repaint the living room for the sixth time because she didn't like the colors she had picked out the first five times. The color was light taupe, as were all of the colors she had picked out the first five times. They were so close to the same color that only an artist could tell that any swatch was even a little bit different, and even then, the swatches all had to be right together to tell that any one was a little lighter, darker, warmer or cooler than the other. Then I saw a huge pile of discarded stone, good stone, not broken pieces. I talked to the stone mason who told me that she had said she didn't want certain stones because she didn't like little bits of color of some of them, he was also on time and materials. I should have turned around, loaded up my equipment and left right then, but I didn't, I'm good for my word even if others aren't. I painted the job anyway, thinking that nobody could really be THAT bad. I was wrong.
I finished the job, after literally dozens of revisions to the original design, after (of course) they were already painted to original spec. Nit-picky little changes that didn't make the painting better, just a little different, and took all of my planned days off without extra pay. Then, after I was finished and packing up to go, she refused to pay me unless I completely repainted an entire wall with dormer walk out windows that had been done to look like the inside of a castle in the exact colors of the original design that she had approved using the exact same paint, because she decided she now didn't like the color that I had been painting for days, and she had seen ten times without a word. By then, I was completely out of time, I already had spent three extra days painting free and now had no break between jobs, when I had planned to have three days off to unwind, I said very nicely that I didn't have time. She actually started screaming at me and throwing my paint tubes against my van. I never got paid. She never had the wall repainted (since they were a referral, I knew several of their friends) she kept the painting for which she had refused to pay, and the kids loved it but I was out a couple of weeks work and a thousand dollars worth of materials, plus travel, lodging etc. Not quite enough to hire a lawyer to fight, since the lawyer would have taken most of the winnings from the suit. If I'd had a contract, I could have filed a lien, but it was verbal. I found out later that the couple was sued by a number of building contractors. Since the woman was a lawyer, and apparently a very good one, she didn't think anyone could beat her in court. I don't know if any of the other contractors won their cases, but I do know that it didn't take long before no contractors in the area would work on their house. It cost tons more to build the house, double what the cost should have been, and the couple went broke building it because every out-of-town contractor had to charge for hotels and per diem for their entire crew as she continually changed her mind. They had to sell it at a huge loss even though property values in the area had been skyrocketing. It didn't do me any good, but it's nice to see Karma at work sometimes. For a very long time, I refused to do work for lawyers. I also now work almost exclusively on time and material plus expenses unless I really trust the customer.
Chapter 4 - Smaller concerns
The final downside occurs when producing art in public. Two things really, the first being that you are out in public and everyone will want to talk to you. You can lose most of your work day if you don't find a quick way of telling people you would love to talk to them more, but you are on a deadline. The second is that public art will be viewed by everyone. Controversial subjects or extremely unusual or hard to understand imagery does not work well.
This is the story of a painting that I really enjoyed doing, but turned into something of a disaster. There was a building in the town in which I lived that looked awful. The owners hadn't painted it in far too long and it was an eyesore. Worse yet, it was right on the corner of the towns main intersection. Although I had already learned not to be the instigator of free projects that would end up costing me a lot of time and money, I decided to volunteer my time to do a mural on the building just to get rid of the eyesore. I talked to the owner, who of course agreed to let me paint a mural, but he didn't just want the worst wall toward the center of town painted, he wanted the entire huge building painted for free in addition. I said OK, because the whole building was really ugly as it sat and it would be a better look to put a coat of paint on the whole building. To his credit, the man donated $1000 dollars to the project, which only paid for the primer coat of paint, and only that because I was able to get a discount from the local paint supply store for some possible mention in the local paper about donors or whatever I could do to let people know they donated. It ended up being a "Donor Plaque" on the wall of the building that named everyone who donated even a dollar, and many who never actually paid, but had promised some donation. I went around trying to find someone to help with material and rental costs, which would be about $8000 for the paint alone for the project to be done right, and ended up with the only people in town willing to help with a few dollars here and there were the art gallery owners, of which there were many, but only if I let them have some of their artists do pieces of the mural and get credit for it. My original idea of painting a western scene (in a western town) had to fly out the window unless I wanted to pull almost every penny of the money out of my own pocket. City hall had promised only $600 - (which they never paid.) So, I came up with an idea to make the wall look like the inside of an art gallery, with each artist painting one of the paintings on the wall. Dozens of the artists came on board, most promising to donate $50 and a couple of them $500, and I was able to raise pledges for all but about $4500, which came out of my pocket - not too bad, better than eight grand. I had hoped I would pick up a few more sponsors along the way. The husband of one gallery owner was a building contractor who donated the use of a scissor lift which saved a bundle of rental and got me up 2/3's of the way up the 40 foot tall building.
I had originally planned to paint the project myself in about two weeks, but this idea would probably take longer. So, I came up with a rough design, everyone liked it, and it had enough spaces for every artist who wanted to do a painting to do one. It took me away from my own work for over a month, working seven days a week except when it rained.
*Problem one: Some people who say they will do something, won't. And some artist who paint very well small, can't alter their methods to paint large.
*Problem two: Many artists, especially the very young, think art is only art if it sparks a controversy. And some do not know that revulsion isn't controversy.
*Problem three: You can't tell someone doing something for free, or paying a few dollars for the privilege what to do, without them kicking like a mule.
*Problem four: A percentage who promise to donate money, will be too broke once the check is due. Even city hall.
*Problem five: People who are accustomed to working alone are not good at ordering others around. I am use to working alone, although I have since learned to direct community projects effectively.
* Problem six: artists who aren't actually paying for very expensive paint can go through $1000 worth of it in a few square feet if you aren't watching them like a hawk. On this painting, only two artists and galleries actually donated as much money as the paint they used cost - out of over twenty galleries. For some reason, they can't quite understand that the same incredibly expensive paint they buy in tiny tubes to paint on canvas, is either the same stuff, or inferior to the paint used for an outdoor mural. The volume discount counts for something, but the paint and clear coat cost for any high quality mural is enormous.
!!!Conclusion: No good deed goes unpunished!
Some people were absolutely wonderful and came to help often. It only takes a little longer to have one person come help you with a mural who has never painted one, than it does to do it yourself. The more people who help, the longer it takes since you spend most of your time teaching, and very little painting. I couldn't do a realistic mural, because many of the artists helping could not paint realism, so we decided on a more cartoonish style where proportions of all of the people in the mural (did I mention that I had to do portraits of all of the towns artists and gallery owners on the mural? About 40 recognizable portraits in all had to be rendered) were still fairly accurate and I could paint recognizable faces on bodies that might have been painted by anyone, and paint the more obvious bodies myself. I started the mural with the help of a paid assistant who was not among the local artists. She was the only person actually being paid on the project, and was a muralist in her own right, but up to that point only of paintings small and non-realistic enough to draw without any measurement. She was very young, still an undergrad in art school as I recall (she now has a Doctorate and is a practicing art therapist.) The first few days of the mural went well, we were zipping right along getting the base coat down with the help of a donated lift truck and driver that got us up to the top of the 40 foot building, and we started methodically drawing the design onto the building. My assistant had never done a mural this large and she was frustrated that we didn't just start painting, she was bored, and she was still pretty much a child herself. We were popping chalk lines for the whole first day after we painted the building with the base coat. It was the first time, and only time as it turned out, I hired her, but she was the granddaughter of my very best customers and friends, and I had known her for years, so I decided to let her do one of the largest paintings that was going to be on the wall of the gallery to get her going and make her happy. She painted a crouching nude (but not exposed) man who would have been about 25 feet tall had he been standing. I suppose I should point out at this point that this was an extremely conservative Texas town. There were no naughty bits showing on the painting. It was very tasteful and interesting but, this is the center of town and the first thing actually being painted while I was still busy drawing out the outlines of everything is a giant naked man. I almost made her paint clothes on him, but I was paying for the lions share of this out of my own pocket, and all of the other artists loved it, so I decided to be a rebel too and I left it on the wall. It started an avalanche of young artist wondering how outrageous they could be. I heard there was a sermon written about it being evil, and public outrage etc. but that was nothing compared to what they said when some of the other artists pieces went up.
To be fair, most of it, the vast majority was pretty well suited to the town, but the younger the artist, the more they want to shock the public and the more outrageous the choices of colors against the background. It became something of a contest among the young artists to see who could be the most shocking. A few of the younger artists did things that were fun, but disturbing. One was very creepy and twisted, but there was little I could do anything about. It wasn't overtly anything but an ugly cartoon kid with bees buzzing around his head and a mutant angular frog tongue jetting out of his mouth, done in the most garish and loud colors possible in the context of the overall painting. The vast majority of people hated it, and blamed me. After a month of my time and a lot of money out of my pocket, the thing was finally finished and I never heard the end of it. The overall effect was nothing like I wanted, the various artists paintings didn't fit together. No gallery would have ever hung those works together at the same time, and honestly, I doubt anyone would have ever hung a few of them at any gallery anywhere. I looked at all of these artists work that was hanging in the galleries and none were as offensive as some of the paintings they did on the wall. About half of the artists didn't do their paintings, so I had to fill in all of the gaps with paintings that I hoped would smooth the transitions a little, but there was really no way. In some cases, I painted copies of the work the artists were planning to paint from their designs. We had such a hodge-podge of crap (understatement) on the wall there was nothing to do but not put a clear UV coat on (by then I was glad to save $1000 on the clear coat) and let it fade as quickly as possible since they had used up all of my high end mural paint from using many times the needed paint, and some of the paint we were using toward the end was fairly cheap stuff. By then, I had decided not to take any more out of my own pocket than I already had. It still ended up costing me a month of work and about $3000. The owner painted over it about 10 years later. If I had it to do over, I would have simply said "no" to the building owner who was trying to get his enormous building painted for the cost of the primer and washed my hands of it.
But, as I said earlier, I had a lot of fun doing that painting, meeting and working with other artists, and being a rebel for a little while. It was a good time, and even though it was an abject failure as a cohesive artwork, it was worth doing and I wouldn't in hind sight have wanted to miss that particular experience. I have, of course, thought of a hundred ways I could have still had a great time, but produced a much better piece of public art. It took the worst looking building in town and turned it into a bizarre WTF!? landmark for a while. Ordinarily, and other other circumstances, I would and could have repainted the offensive parts of the mural and made it a very cool thing, but in this situation, it would have caused hurt feelings and ill will. I had no choice but to let the ugly thing stand "as is." Lesson learned.
Actually, I learned several lessons:
*Have an overall design with every major element worked out ahead of time. Stick to it unless you see a minor change that will improve the painting as it goes up. Think long and hard about allowing major changes unless they clearly make the painting better.
*Never, ever(!) trust the improvisations of others unless you can paint over it. In a situation like the one above, had it worked, I would not have gotten any credit - but since it absolutely sucked, I got the blame. Never put yourself in this position. Walk away from any project that you know will suck before it even happens. In hindsight, I should have walked away when the only funding I could find was from people who thought they could find some advertising benefit from a community service project. Those are the exact opposite of people who make that kind of project successful.
* A gaggle of artists makes a herd of cats seem like a well trained army, marching pristine formations. For this reason, I seldom use assistants, it's usually faster to do the work myself. Artists have egos, if you have no choice but to paint over their work, do what you must, but expect them to read you for trash to everyone they know. The best thing is to try to fix their work just enough to fit the mural, while not actually obliterating every brush stroke. It lets them save face - the more of their work you can leave without it destroying the continuity, the better - that is an art in itself.
Under other circumstances, working with a team of artists could create some fine work. Not that way. Please, don't repeat my mistakes.
Chapter 5 - Community Projects
Community projects aren't for the feint of heart. Murphy's Law is always in effect. Usually, as an artist, you are very appreciated and respected. That will sometimes not be the case when doing community projects. You will always be the primary financial contributor to any free community mural project. Go in with your eyes wide open. Community projects that are successful will always have the credit given to those other than the muralist who actually designs and does the bulk of the work, usually a politician, socialite, someone who contributed some bit of the money to buy paint, or somebody who had the bright idea of, "gosh, we should have a mural painted." This is true even if you put up your all of the money for paint and work free, and even when it was 100% your idea to begin with - but the muralist will be given 100% of the blame if the project turns out badly. This means, if you take on a free project, and community helpers do a bad job, which is often (usually) the case, you will have to go in after them and repaint the whole project by yourself and take no credit for it. Even with good artists helping, you will no doubt have to repaint a lot of it because the styles and brush strokes won't match, and the work completely lacks cohesion. Also, If you are hard at work, (and you will be) the press will always interview those who don't seem to be doing much of anything. Do not expect the press to even mention your name or use your picture unless you are extremely attractive and photogenic (which I am not), except possibly as an afterthought, as just someone who happened to be there painting. Count on everyone else taking credit for the project if it's going well. What may seem worse still, is that you will be asked to do free work for many people and businesses in that town until the day you die, because you did that one for free. Some people will assume you work cheap or free all the time. Churches are usually the worst offenders - I have been asked not only to work for months free, but also to pay for the paint.
You will most often either have to design the project from the ground up, or use design ideas from some committee or contest, and try to work them into something resembling a cohesive artwork, and give all the credit to the committee or contest winner/winners, even if the final design doesn't resemble in whole or part, what you were handed - which is, as you may already know, much harder than designing it yourself from scratch. I have never once been handed a design that would actually work for the space the mural was to be painted, although I have on rare occasion been handed some nice drawings that could work with some modification or other ideas incorporated. The trick is to keep enough of the design elements to make it strongly resemble the designs you are given so whoever did it can still call it theirs. Sometimes, you can only take a general idea, but still, give ALL the credit to the person who had the idea, yes even if the idea is "how about a sunset" or "how about a landscape." In a community project, give the credit to others because they are part of the community. This may not seem fair to you, because you are also part of the community, but if you take credit for what you do for a living, while not acknowledging the ideas of others, you are being ungracious. If you are handed a truly hideous picture of, say, a purple horse, you can't for any reason simply blow up an awful drawing of that exact purple horse, because that's what they said they wanted. You redraw a beautiful purple horse (call it it a "tweak" on their idea) in a similar pose to what you were handed and call it their idea. Keep your own ego out of it. Try to maintain the spirit of the drawing, but improve that which needs improvement to something that will look good on a mural. Remember, you will never get credit for the good things, but you will be blamed for everything bad, because you are the one who knows what will, and will not work in a large piece of art. The only exception to this I can think of, is if a winning design is a very crude drawing by a very small child - in that case, it might be nice to have an actual depiction of the exact children's drawing blown up to mural size, making the brush strokes look like crayon or finger paint - that could be very cool, and in that case, the more exact the better. In fact, that just gave me an idea for my next community project that will cost me thousands of dollars worth of work. It will take a lot of time to paint something that perfectly looks like finger paint.
If you are going to do a community project, do it because you are trying to do something good for the community and can actually afford the time and money. And be well aware that you will lose TWICE as much time and work as if you had painted the whole thing yourself if there is any complexity to the project at all. It is not tax deductible, so you can't write any of it off as a charitable contribution unless it is benefiting some registered charity (which it never is). Also, don't expect to get a lot (or any) local mural work out of it, because the credit for the project will not go to you unless it turns out badly, then everyone else will distance themselves from the project. The many days or weeks you are working on the mural by yourself for free will be completely ignored by just about everyone, but the day or two when you have some help by people well known in the town will be the days that the press takes pictures, and interviews anyone and everyone else but you. And, it is often the case that several people seem to know when the press will show up, because they are the people who called them, manage to be there with a brush in their hand when the press shows up, and disappear as soon as the photo-op ends, often without ever having so much as dipped the brush in any actual paint, never to be seen or heard from again. This is often more the rule than the exception. In the most recent public mural I did, the only acknowledgement I received from the local downtown network would be in the "and all the other numerous volunteers" section - I wasn't mentioned at all, even though I had put the design together, drawn it on the surface before the public painting day, painted 98% of the mural after the under-painting day was done, spent most days painting by myself, and donated more cash than anyone.
If you are lucky, you will get one full days work out of the crowd who show up on under-painting day, after you have drawn the project and turned it into something of a "paint by numbers" - which takes much, much longer than drawing it up for yourself or a real artist to paint, in fact it sometimes takes as long as it would take to actually paint the whole mural if it is very detailed - then you are pretty much on your own after that - a few folks will show up sporadically to help do the actual painting, (which really doesn't usually require an under-painting of the sort that you will need for a non-skilled community paint day) but it isn't frequent, and often, you will lose those whole days because you will have to either spend all of your time watching over volunteers, or you will have to fix what they have done. The many thousands of dollars you are losing because you are doing a free project that is taking time you could otherwise spend making money will seldom, if ever, be recognized. You aren't just giving away one free mural, it is often closer to two free murals worth of time and effort. Just be aware of this, don't let it hurt your feelings, and don't do it if you can't afford it. The world needs more people who actually get the work done and don't worry about being popular. If you go into a community project with expectations that it will benefit you personally, you will be disappointed. I have done several such projects, and the only benefit I've ever derived is that I have made the world a little better, and often met some nice people along the way - that's enough for me. The one and only time a project went south (detailed above under "smaller concerns"), and I was not in a position to repaint other artists work, I got grief about it for years. If you are not a person who is OK with this, don't let yourself get involved in such a project. These projects are to bring a community together, to make them feel good about themselves and feel like they are doing something to make their town a better place, they are not for your personal benefit. The fact that you could do the project in half the time if not for all the other people helping is beside the point - it's a coming together for the community. The fact that someone else will usually take the credit doesn't eliminate the fact that you did something good for the world. A few people will know that it was you who did it, even though you will usually have to let others sign their names to it because it was their "idea".
For you, it will be a learning experience every single time you do it. It's a study in human nature, and a way to pass on your knowledge to a new generation. It's also a great way to learn the value of selflessness. There's too damned little selflessness in the world, artists above all others, need to lead the way. What you get isn't money, or even recognition, but a big piece of your soul that left most of us sometime around puberty.
Chapter 6 - A few thoughts before we get to the nuts and bolts
When I retire, I can paint only the designs that I want to leave with the world, without worry about selling them and without concern over how long they took to paint - if someone buys them, fine - if not, I can feel good that I had the chance to paint them and feel fairly certain that they will find homes someday, whether or not I'm around to see it. I just feel lucky to have been able to spend my life doing what I love.
I happen to think the world needs more murals. Now that I'm older, with white hair (and damn little of even that) and heading toward my codger-hood, I can honestly say with what could be acquired wisdom (or it could be gas, it's hard to tell at this age) that a little competition makes us all better. The gallery option is still open to you if you like it and don't mind the games. I sometimes sell my smaller paintings and finished mural designs through galleries but the wide variation of styles can confuse the average art buyer - the gallery thing seems better for the artists who only paint in one style and (most of the time) have a second source of income.
In the course of a week I might paint in half a dozen different styles - some are combinations of established styles and some are something brand new I invent to match the subject, the customers personality, or how I'm feeling that day. It is fun and it keeps me creative. As I age, I tend to do more of what I really enjoy, which is realism. I noticed many years ago that the art world tries hard to box artists in to one single style, to recognize at a glance who did the painting. Once your work starts to sell, the gallery owners want you to keep cranking out the same type of work over and over. My formal education was in music composition (scholarship was in composition and multimedia production), we used to say of composers whose work always sounded the same after they achieved some notoriety that "they wrote a good piece once and have been writing it ever since." I see artists who repeat themselves much the same way, but I don't blame them, and where in music it is the worst thing you can do, in art it is not only expected but forced upon you. The pressure the visual artist feels to work in this formulaic manner is not something with which I agree. I can understand it from a business standpoint, but I can't help but think it limits the time an artist can spend working at his/her craft before becoming hopelessly out of style. So many great artists who had great careers have died destitute and out of favor that I think we should all step back and take a look at how we have allowed ourselves to be marketed. I tried for a time to work that way the first time one of my styles found ready buyers, but it bored me to tears, becoming stale like factory work. I suffered and so did the art.
Picasso reinvented himself many times - it kept him fresh, gave him a very long career and only late in life did he descend into self-indulgence, painting whatever worthless nonsense came to mind because he knew it would sell if he signed it. I have tried to reinvent my art often, but I admit it is harder now that I am older, a few styles feel like the comfort of home and I now tend to stick to those. I once did long, open ended series in similar styles but many pieces in the same series still look like they were painted with a different hand (as well they often were, since I paint both right and left handed to ward off muscle fatigue) or a different artist altogether, drawing their consistency more from choice of subject matter than from technical style. Perhaps the only thing usually still present in my painting from childhood forward (regardless of style) is optical mixing of colors and a shifting or exaggeration of colors from what is real, to what makes me feel more engaged. From a distance, the work can look like the colors are realistic and blended on the palette, up close they are often not.
There seems to be a conception that true artists must starve, be miserable, wear all black and have drug problems. I'm probably the happiest guy on the planet, love life, don't take drugs, wear black only when it's a gift, and I eat like a Clydesdale - I guess I'm not a true artist, but whatever it is I do, I love it. A good friend of mine has a slogan at the end of all of his e-mail - "Do what you love for a living and you'll never work another day in your life." He owns and operates a hotel in the Caribbean and loves it. Whatever you do, may you all find happiness in your unemployment while making the world a more beautiful place.
Chapter 7 - Scaling a design to mural size
Let me first begin with the obvious. Absolutely the easiest way to scale a design to mural size is to project the image onto the surface and trace it. Many murals have been done with this method and it is close to foolproof, provided you have a projector with enough power to project the image to the size it needs to be while maintaining a sharp edge. It works best for small murals where you can control the lighting in the room or do your projection at night. Let me warn you. If you are using photographs or designs that are not your own for a commercial mural, you MUST get permission in writing from the original photographer or artist. If someone wants you to do a Disney mural, forget it. You will not get permission and they will sue you if they get wind of it, and they hire people to search out unlicensed usage so if it ever shows up on someones' website or Facebook post, they will find it. The search software to detect copyright infringement is killer. Just use your own design unless the customer gives you one of their own photos to use, and they promise you in writing that they own the image, then it's on them.
Simply blowing up a photo or smaller painting to mural size and painting it is easy. Even the colors can be copied directly from the photo or original painting. With a projector, even a person who can't draw can do it, provided they can paint. Take the photo or painting to any color matching counter at a hardware store and order however much you need of each main color in it of high quality house paint, paint it, then clear coat it (if it's exterior) with a UV protectant polyurethane. That will last about 20 years. If you need something exterior to last longer, you will have to spend a boatload more money on Golden (brand) mural paint, and matching UV protectant clear finish. You will not be able to color match and order exact colors, so you will be mixing each color by eye, which takes much longer and you will need to charge accordingly.
When you can't use a projector
There are many, many circumstances that will force you to hand draw a design. Buildings in well lit cities, murals too large for the projector, too high off the ground for a projector, and a dozen other reasons make using a projector impossible. Don't consider suicide, here's how to do it just as well without a projector - really, you can be just as accurate without one. I almost never use a projector. It takes a little longer, but it isn't bad. Back when I started doing this, (my grandchildren will insist that dinosaurs were a real threat at that time) projectors that would blow up a sharp image to mural size were impossible to find, and they aren't easy to find or afford now. You do have to be able to actually draw for all of these methods, but I'm assuming everyone who is reading this is already an artist, so I will also assume you have the drawing skills.
Method 1 The Albrect Durer or "Grid" Method
Book 1, The Basics - Full Book
Doug Myerscough
Introduction
I know many come to this page directly from a search engine, however many of the murals discussed are actually seen on other pages - I will try to post most on the "home" page - if you scroll down that page and click on any image, you can see it larger and navigate forward and back from the enlarged images. I get a lot of mail from artists, do-it-your-selfers, and youngsters who would like to know the process of painting a mural, what materials to use, what technique is used for maintaining accurate proportion on a large scale, what the mural business is like etc. I should preface by saying that there are as many ways to paint a mural as there are muralists. It reinvents itself somewhat every time because there are always little problems you'll run into that you've never had before. The methods described are by no means the only way to paint murals, simply the methods that have worked best for me. The first part is mostly a bit of background on myself, a bit about what the actual business of painting murals is like, and some personal history. If you just want to learn how to blow up a drawing to mural size, or get some specific info on paints, or other questions, you can skip on down to those parts any time.
When I began painting murals I could find very little written on the subject of techniques used in painting murals, and what I could find was often very academic, obtuse, and largely useless. I will make every attempt to make it as simple as possible. I will focus on realism, because that is by far the most often requested style for a muralist. The same techniques I use to paint giant wall murals also work to paint hyper-realism on canvas, where the level of detail far exceeds that of a camera. I am writing this little "how to" book with the hope that no one ever need repeat my idiotic blunders. If there is ever a twelve step program for artistic idiots, I'll be a founding member. Almost everyone can learn from their own mistakes, the wisest learn from the mistakes of others. I'm keeping it as brief as possible while still giving the info you need to get started. I'll write a more detailed "how-to" book at some point, but this book will cover the most important things in a simple way. I started to write the more detailed book as a first book but realized the important points were getting lost in the flood of secondary technical information, which was really a boring read, and included far more information than was really needed. Nothing that isn't read is going to do any good. I'll eventually figure out how to make the more technical manual of mural painting entertaining, so by all means, read the second book also someday when I finish it, but expect no new epiphanies. It will delve into paints, equipment, step by step beginning to end murals, and special situations much more deeply than the scope of this book allows, as well as the information contained in this book. This book is like the fast food version of a nine course meal, but it's free and filling. I promise to keep it as short as possible. This book is based on many years of questions from many artists who have emailed me asking questions.
I am not going to try to teach anyone to draw or paint other than to say: "Keep at it until it looks right, and don't worry about how long your first few murals take." This is written primarily for artists who have the skills and would like to know how to use them on a larger scale, as well as those who are just curious about how it is done. I am not going to give business advice, because I am not a businessman - my advice in that area would be less than worthless.
Any painting techniques I describe are only those that differ from small scale painting. For anyone who just wants to learn how to scale up designs to mural size, this is a good place to skip ahead to the section titled "Scaling a design to mural size". I'm going to blither on about myself for a few pages - a few choice experiences and things to avoid. There may be a real danger of falling asleep and hurting your head on the keyboard or falling out of the chair and dropping your kindle, so don't feel obliged to read it.
Chapter 1 - My first gig - you gain confidence from success, but you learn more from failure
Other than a small mural I painted on the wall of my bedroom which was only about 6'x8' when I was about twelve, which turned out OK and gave me confidence, the first mural I painted for actual money (only a few dollars after the cost of the paint) in the mid 1970's was, well, to say it was "lousy" would be an insult to lousy paintings everywhere. Everything was out of proportion. The painting looked great from three feet away, but from the 25 foot distance (the closest distance that anyone ever viewed the painting) it looked strange and disproportionate. I was lost in detail and not seeing the overall design as I painted. With the confidence of a sixteen year old who was convinced he was invincible, brilliant, and the finest thing to hit the planet since buttered bread, I had not drawn or even thought about the design, I just started painting, knowing it would be a masterpiece that people would travel from all over the world to see, and museums would fight over who got to build a new wing to house it after the building was taken down.
Thankfully it was a quick, temporary mural done with cheap house paint (not to mention - almost free) painted to dress up a condemned building until it could be torn down. The building was leveled a year later, destroying the evidence. All photographs have since been conveniently lost. My first real professional mural stank (kindest possible word), but I loved painting it and to my surprise, most thought it was distorted on purpose, there was a certain odd consistency in distortion and the colors and painting style were advanced enough to look like it may have been done on purpose. Most thought I'd used artistic license and it must have a nebulous "higher meaning" only comprehensible to an educated few, a bold statement on the pressures of impending reality distorting the idealism of youth. I got a real kick out of the explanations of those who thought they understood. Of course I never told them it was distorted because I didn't have a clue what I was doing - I think that would have broken some unwritten artists code. Only one person ever looked at the painting and knew why it was the way it was. A nice old guy who had been a billboard artist all of his life (people actually use to hand paint billboards!) hit the nail on the head when he said, "Yup, never backed up once while you were paintin' it, did ya?" I learned a lot about what not to do.
Painting a mural is much different from painting smaller works. A person is completely overwhelmed and absorbed by the painting itself. You are too close to see what you are doing while you are painting and it tends to make you want to do stupid things. You have to spend a great deal of time walking, or even driving away to see the work from the distance it will be viewed. I know of one muralist who takes a motor scooter with him, since he does mostly barns that are viewed from roads that are sometimes a quarter mile or more away. Some things are viewed mostly by people driving by at 70 miles per hour at a distance no closer than 200 feet. You have to ask yourself a few questions.
*What good is fine detail a foot off of the ground and far away from the focal point going to do anyone? Probably none.
*How many people will ever even know it's there, if anyone? Same answer
*Did you just waste hours painting details that make no difference at the viewing distance? The answer to this one is often YES! And worse yet, if you don't paint it out, you may have to do the same level of detail on all of the rest of the painting if it pulls the eye from where it needs to go. If you get mired in detail in an unimportant section for your own gratification, you are wasting time, paint, and money. Spend your time on the area where the eye of the viewer lands first, and less time successively on areas that are secondary or tertiary. If you had a great idea for that section, use it later in a different painting as the subject. There are some tricks to leading the eye where you want it to go that I will get into below.
*Does your design hold up at 70mph from a few hundred yards with a viewing time of about 4 seconds? For things that have a short viewing time, keep the design simple - not simple minded, just uncomplicated.
*If you had never seen it before - is it memorable? That's a biggy. Sometimes things don't hit you the same way large as they do small. If a design isn't working, what can you do to fix it? Very often, the design itself is somewhat dictated to you by the client, you have to try to find any way you can to make a bad idea look good. The second you realize something isn't working, you need to find a way to fix it. If the change is minor, just do it. If it is major, you may have to get permission to make a major change. Sometimes, the client is so sold on their own idea, they won't let you change. In that case, you can make the color surreal or impressionistic. Wild color can take peoples minds off the fact that the idea of the painting is mundane and make the painting pop. Don't use it as a crutch, it gets old quick. If you paint a lot in the same area, people will stop hiring you if you do that too much, because then they start to identify you with it and think it's all you can do.
*What can you do to make this better? Would more detail at the focal point make a difference at this distance? Most of the time it will, because that is where people are looking. For example, if you have a freakishly realistic eye, painted into a mural that is otherwise not highly detailed, and that eye is the focal point, the detail at that point will make the viewer feel that the whole painting is highly detailed because that is the section they saw most as they drove past.
*How can I better lead the viewers eye where I want it to go? There are a few answers to this.
!!!Remember this; The eye usually goes first to the area of highest contrast.
It is simply the way the human mind works. Study a little about how humans perceive things and it will carry you a long way. This can be color contrast with strong complimentary colors, value contrast with light against dark, detail contrast, loose painting around an area of high detailed hyper-realism can be very effective. Lines leading to the focal point can also be effective but sometimes impossible to incorporate. Combinations of all of these can be startling. If you want to lead the viewers eye, which you definitely do, think long and hard about this. There are a million great things that can come from just this one thought.
You want to lead the eye to the point where you pour the blood, sweat and tears of your painting. In a painting of two gorillas fighting in the jungle that will get an average viewing time of 30 seconds, a perfectly rendered parrot in a tree in the background is not going to help, and may well make things worse by distracting the eye, but making those angry gorillas jump off the wall with contrast and detail will increase the average viewing time by transfixing the viewer- in the case of fighting gorillas, (an idea just pulled squarely out of my backside, the source of all of my ideas) a little clear white slobber flying out of a mouth (yes, it's gross) against a nearly black background in a rough line that leads generally toward the face of the fiercest looking gorilla, the whites of whose eyes are pink and red with anger with white highlights against dark green eyes (complimentary colors), almost black irises (high value contrast), might lead the eye to where you want it to go. Your goal is to force the viewer inside the painting whenever you have a chance. Try to close your eyes and see that in your minds eye, build your own design around it, perhaps with a foggy background and the gorillas so close they feel almost like a danger to you - change things around - try to come up with even stronger ways to enhance it. That isn't a subtle example, but this idea carries down to the most intimate and subtle paintings, "look here first, then there, then there" all done with successive levels of one or another type of contrast with what I term the contrast hierarchy. If you take the time to think it through and execute it right, you can tell an entire story in a single painting and have most people instantly understand without beating them over the head. The great masters were no strangers to this idea, but it seems to have been lost through so many years of abstraction and pop culture. Some painters do it without even knowing they do it I suspect. Look at a few of your favorite paintings with this in mind - see where your eye goes first, next, next... Do you see something emerging that you may have never seen before?
Chapter 2 - The Big Art Thing
Much like those who do large scale sculpture who I've talked with, the scale of mural work makes me think of myself more a craftsman than an artist most of the time. Painting a mural exists somewhere between fine art and house painting. It's hard to get too snooty when you're up four stories on a scaffold with the wind blowing twenty five miles per hour, covered in paint and eating lunch out of a paper bag because it started to rain and if you try to climb down, the wet scaffold will shake so much you might end up as a stain on the sidewalk. But of course if lightning starts, you have no choice but to climb down anyway because you are essentially standing on a lightning rod.
The biggest plus to being a muralist has been the quality and diversity of people I have met along the way. Many of those I now count as my best friends were my customers first - in fact, I first met my wife while painting a public mural, and she commissioned two pieces before we started dating (who says good customers don't get preferential treatment!) Those who commission art are most often extremely intelligent people with a true love for the arts and at least some tolerance for the eccentricities of artists. I would never have met such a fine and varied group in any other walk of life.
Artist tend to get a lot more respect than those in many other professions. Whether we actually deserve it or not is anyone's guess, but I am most often treated deferentially by my clients. A good friend of mine who is a building contractor once pointed out when we had been doing work for the same people who were remodeling a house, that they treated me like a Greek God who could hang the moon, and treated him like the redheaded step child. I hadn't noticed until he brought it up, but he was right. It isn't fair. He deserved the same respect I have taken for granted for most of my life. I suspect it has something to do with the fact that everyone assumes they could learn to build or remodel a house, but many people think there is some gift that artists have, that they could never have. They assume that my abilities come from above, and his come from shop class. It isn't true of course, but artists have been playing on it since at least the dark ages.
I learned to draw and paint when I was fairly young, and have continued to improve as I've gotten older. My early work was no better than any other kid, but I am a quick learner and it wasn't long before I had surpassed most of my peers on the technical end of the craft, but only because I did it a lot, so they all tend to remember me as the kid who could always draw and play music. They don't remember, or more likely never saw, the scribbles I drew when I was three, which looked like any other fairly bright three year olds' drawings. The difference is that I spent a lot of time drawing and playing music when they were out playing on the jungle gym because I was only allowed certain activities when I was very young, art and music were two of them.
In the minus column (and this is nothing compared to the good stuff, even though this section will be longer because I've learned more from these things, and nobody wants to read about happy stuff, everyone wants dirt, as long as it isn't happening to them) although I'm seldom asked to paint anything about which I can't find something to like, I don't often get to paint the designs I would like to paint. Clients who let you paint whatever you think works best are rare and to be cherished, possibly worshiped. I have one such set of clients - they own more of my work than any 10 others combined, and own some of my very best work. They are free spirits who let me have fun, and seldom have anything specific in mind. Most clients on the other hand, often have very specific designs or subjects they would like to have painted and the ideas are sometimes tasteless, cliche or awkward. I have to bite my tongue and make suggestions in a nice way using word substitution about "minor modifications" (enormous changes) to their there overall "wonderful" (hideous) "idea" (brain fart) that might "tweak" (pull it screaming from the toilet) it just a "tiny bit" (enormously). If I were paying my hard earned money to someone I didn't know to paint a mural, I would darn well want them to paint what I wanted to have on my wall, but I usually know when it's best to just let the damn plumber fix the pipe the way he thinks will work best. It is my job to make sure that what they think they want turns out a lot better than the actual idea, because if I actually painted the original idea, it would not be long before they've tired of the painting or become embarrassed by it when all of their friends have damned it with faint praise or outright hated it. If their friends don't like it, they blame the artist, not the owner of the painting and you will never get a referral from it. There are times when the client insists, and you just have to grin and bear it. There has to be at least one level hidden in every great painting, layers of thought that set themselves subliminally and make people want to look at the painting again, many designs don't allow it. But that's a discussion for another book.
Every once in a while, a real trend emerges, like the Tuscan vineyard landscape with trompe l'eoil archways in the foreground that started in the early 1990's at some little Italian restaurant and lasted WAY too long. For a while, everyone will want the same painting. Some things simply strike a chord in people. They will see something in a magazine that they like and before you know it, like a tsunami, you are getting one call after another to do variations of the same thing on 50 different peoples wall. There are only so many variations on a theme you can paint before it starts to feel like factory work, but if that is the only work you can get, it beats starving. One positive on doing similar works one after another is that it really does get streamlined quite a bit. A painting that might take a week the first time, will only take three days by the fifth time. Done often enough, you will seem like a magician because you'll be in and out in a day or two, although the price is the same as it was the first time. If you are simply in it for the money, this is the way to make a lot of it, right up until the time when it goes completely out of style, and it's the only style for which you have become known. Neo-classical painting is something of an exception to that rule. Certain classical themes will always be a constant; cherubs in the clouds on a ceiling, or copies of Michelangelo's "The Creation of Adam" and similar famous paintings are things on which some people build entire careers. I've done them all, as have many, but I hate to repeat myself, so now I send those jobs to a person still willing to do them, and will continue to do so unless I have no other, more interesting work pending.
I try to get a feel for the clients likes, dislikes, and design something that fits them. I never take a client I truly dislike, or who treats me with any less respect they would treat a friend no matter how much money they have. Life is too short to spend weeks or even months being uncomfortable, and trying to produce beauty for someone you don't feel deserves it. You may see these people every day for however long the job takes and it will take a heavy toll if you are unhappy. I would rather do ten paintings for deserving peasants than one for a rich prick.
Chapter 3 - The Nightmare Job
I have had only one 100% bad experience painting a mural. I was hired to paint a huge fantasy children playroom above a six car garage that was attached to the second floor of the enormous main house which was still under construction. The clients were a professional couple, he was an MD in neurology, she was an attorney. They were referrals and said I had a free hand to do whatever I thought right, a price was set and a design was approved. I told them how long I had to get the job done and they were fine with it, they wouldn't insist on any changes that would run me over. I trusted them. Since I knew the money was certainly no problem for them, I didn't get a deposit, the agreement was verbal. Everything had been negotiated long distance, they were a couple of states away.
My first hint that something was amiss was when I arrived on the job the first day and I noticed the painting crew who were painting the main interior walls were agitated. They saw me pulling my equipment out of my van and one of them shouted "I hope you're on time and materials." Never a good sign! I told them I had quoted a full price for the job and they just shook their head. I asked what was going on and they told me that the women was having them repaint the living room for the sixth time because she didn't like the colors she had picked out the first five times. The color was light taupe, as were all of the colors she had picked out the first five times. They were so close to the same color that only an artist could tell that any swatch was even a little bit different, and even then, the swatches all had to be right together to tell that any one was a little lighter, darker, warmer or cooler than the other. Then I saw a huge pile of discarded stone, good stone, not broken pieces. I talked to the stone mason who told me that she had said she didn't want certain stones because she didn't like little bits of color of some of them, he was also on time and materials. I should have turned around, loaded up my equipment and left right then, but I didn't, I'm good for my word even if others aren't. I painted the job anyway, thinking that nobody could really be THAT bad. I was wrong.
I finished the job, after literally dozens of revisions to the original design, after (of course) they were already painted to original spec. Nit-picky little changes that didn't make the painting better, just a little different, and took all of my planned days off without extra pay. Then, after I was finished and packing up to go, she refused to pay me unless I completely repainted an entire wall with dormer walk out windows that had been done to look like the inside of a castle in the exact colors of the original design that she had approved using the exact same paint, because she decided she now didn't like the color that I had been painting for days, and she had seen ten times without a word. By then, I was completely out of time, I already had spent three extra days painting free and now had no break between jobs, when I had planned to have three days off to unwind, I said very nicely that I didn't have time. She actually started screaming at me and throwing my paint tubes against my van. I never got paid. She never had the wall repainted (since they were a referral, I knew several of their friends) she kept the painting for which she had refused to pay, and the kids loved it but I was out a couple of weeks work and a thousand dollars worth of materials, plus travel, lodging etc. Not quite enough to hire a lawyer to fight, since the lawyer would have taken most of the winnings from the suit. If I'd had a contract, I could have filed a lien, but it was verbal. I found out later that the couple was sued by a number of building contractors. Since the woman was a lawyer, and apparently a very good one, she didn't think anyone could beat her in court. I don't know if any of the other contractors won their cases, but I do know that it didn't take long before no contractors in the area would work on their house. It cost tons more to build the house, double what the cost should have been, and the couple went broke building it because every out-of-town contractor had to charge for hotels and per diem for their entire crew as she continually changed her mind. They had to sell it at a huge loss even though property values in the area had been skyrocketing. It didn't do me any good, but it's nice to see Karma at work sometimes. For a very long time, I refused to do work for lawyers. I also now work almost exclusively on time and material plus expenses unless I really trust the customer.
Chapter 4 - Smaller concerns
The final downside occurs when producing art in public. Two things really, the first being that you are out in public and everyone will want to talk to you. You can lose most of your work day if you don't find a quick way of telling people you would love to talk to them more, but you are on a deadline. The second is that public art will be viewed by everyone. Controversial subjects or extremely unusual or hard to understand imagery does not work well.
This is the story of a painting that I really enjoyed doing, but turned into something of a disaster. There was a building in the town in which I lived that looked awful. The owners hadn't painted it in far too long and it was an eyesore. Worse yet, it was right on the corner of the towns main intersection. Although I had already learned not to be the instigator of free projects that would end up costing me a lot of time and money, I decided to volunteer my time to do a mural on the building just to get rid of the eyesore. I talked to the owner, who of course agreed to let me paint a mural, but he didn't just want the worst wall toward the center of town painted, he wanted the entire huge building painted for free in addition. I said OK, because the whole building was really ugly as it sat and it would be a better look to put a coat of paint on the whole building. To his credit, the man donated $1000 dollars to the project, which only paid for the primer coat of paint, and only that because I was able to get a discount from the local paint supply store for some possible mention in the local paper about donors or whatever I could do to let people know they donated. It ended up being a "Donor Plaque" on the wall of the building that named everyone who donated even a dollar, and many who never actually paid, but had promised some donation. I went around trying to find someone to help with material and rental costs, which would be about $8000 for the paint alone for the project to be done right, and ended up with the only people in town willing to help with a few dollars here and there were the art gallery owners, of which there were many, but only if I let them have some of their artists do pieces of the mural and get credit for it. My original idea of painting a western scene (in a western town) had to fly out the window unless I wanted to pull almost every penny of the money out of my own pocket. City hall had promised only $600 - (which they never paid.) So, I came up with an idea to make the wall look like the inside of an art gallery, with each artist painting one of the paintings on the wall. Dozens of the artists came on board, most promising to donate $50 and a couple of them $500, and I was able to raise pledges for all but about $4500, which came out of my pocket - not too bad, better than eight grand. I had hoped I would pick up a few more sponsors along the way. The husband of one gallery owner was a building contractor who donated the use of a scissor lift which saved a bundle of rental and got me up 2/3's of the way up the 40 foot tall building.
I had originally planned to paint the project myself in about two weeks, but this idea would probably take longer. So, I came up with a rough design, everyone liked it, and it had enough spaces for every artist who wanted to do a painting to do one. It took me away from my own work for over a month, working seven days a week except when it rained.
*Problem one: Some people who say they will do something, won't. And some artist who paint very well small, can't alter their methods to paint large.
*Problem two: Many artists, especially the very young, think art is only art if it sparks a controversy. And some do not know that revulsion isn't controversy.
*Problem three: You can't tell someone doing something for free, or paying a few dollars for the privilege what to do, without them kicking like a mule.
*Problem four: A percentage who promise to donate money, will be too broke once the check is due. Even city hall.
*Problem five: People who are accustomed to working alone are not good at ordering others around. I am use to working alone, although I have since learned to direct community projects effectively.
* Problem six: artists who aren't actually paying for very expensive paint can go through $1000 worth of it in a few square feet if you aren't watching them like a hawk. On this painting, only two artists and galleries actually donated as much money as the paint they used cost - out of over twenty galleries. For some reason, they can't quite understand that the same incredibly expensive paint they buy in tiny tubes to paint on canvas, is either the same stuff, or inferior to the paint used for an outdoor mural. The volume discount counts for something, but the paint and clear coat cost for any high quality mural is enormous.
!!!Conclusion: No good deed goes unpunished!
Some people were absolutely wonderful and came to help often. It only takes a little longer to have one person come help you with a mural who has never painted one, than it does to do it yourself. The more people who help, the longer it takes since you spend most of your time teaching, and very little painting. I couldn't do a realistic mural, because many of the artists helping could not paint realism, so we decided on a more cartoonish style where proportions of all of the people in the mural (did I mention that I had to do portraits of all of the towns artists and gallery owners on the mural? About 40 recognizable portraits in all had to be rendered) were still fairly accurate and I could paint recognizable faces on bodies that might have been painted by anyone, and paint the more obvious bodies myself. I started the mural with the help of a paid assistant who was not among the local artists. She was the only person actually being paid on the project, and was a muralist in her own right, but up to that point only of paintings small and non-realistic enough to draw without any measurement. She was very young, still an undergrad in art school as I recall (she now has a Doctorate and is a practicing art therapist.) The first few days of the mural went well, we were zipping right along getting the base coat down with the help of a donated lift truck and driver that got us up to the top of the 40 foot building, and we started methodically drawing the design onto the building. My assistant had never done a mural this large and she was frustrated that we didn't just start painting, she was bored, and she was still pretty much a child herself. We were popping chalk lines for the whole first day after we painted the building with the base coat. It was the first time, and only time as it turned out, I hired her, but she was the granddaughter of my very best customers and friends, and I had known her for years, so I decided to let her do one of the largest paintings that was going to be on the wall of the gallery to get her going and make her happy. She painted a crouching nude (but not exposed) man who would have been about 25 feet tall had he been standing. I suppose I should point out at this point that this was an extremely conservative Texas town. There were no naughty bits showing on the painting. It was very tasteful and interesting but, this is the center of town and the first thing actually being painted while I was still busy drawing out the outlines of everything is a giant naked man. I almost made her paint clothes on him, but I was paying for the lions share of this out of my own pocket, and all of the other artists loved it, so I decided to be a rebel too and I left it on the wall. It started an avalanche of young artist wondering how outrageous they could be. I heard there was a sermon written about it being evil, and public outrage etc. but that was nothing compared to what they said when some of the other artists pieces went up.
To be fair, most of it, the vast majority was pretty well suited to the town, but the younger the artist, the more they want to shock the public and the more outrageous the choices of colors against the background. It became something of a contest among the young artists to see who could be the most shocking. A few of the younger artists did things that were fun, but disturbing. One was very creepy and twisted, but there was little I could do anything about. It wasn't overtly anything but an ugly cartoon kid with bees buzzing around his head and a mutant angular frog tongue jetting out of his mouth, done in the most garish and loud colors possible in the context of the overall painting. The vast majority of people hated it, and blamed me. After a month of my time and a lot of money out of my pocket, the thing was finally finished and I never heard the end of it. The overall effect was nothing like I wanted, the various artists paintings didn't fit together. No gallery would have ever hung those works together at the same time, and honestly, I doubt anyone would have ever hung a few of them at any gallery anywhere. I looked at all of these artists work that was hanging in the galleries and none were as offensive as some of the paintings they did on the wall. About half of the artists didn't do their paintings, so I had to fill in all of the gaps with paintings that I hoped would smooth the transitions a little, but there was really no way. In some cases, I painted copies of the work the artists were planning to paint from their designs. We had such a hodge-podge of crap (understatement) on the wall there was nothing to do but not put a clear UV coat on (by then I was glad to save $1000 on the clear coat) and let it fade as quickly as possible since they had used up all of my high end mural paint from using many times the needed paint, and some of the paint we were using toward the end was fairly cheap stuff. By then, I had decided not to take any more out of my own pocket than I already had. It still ended up costing me a month of work and about $3000. The owner painted over it about 10 years later. If I had it to do over, I would have simply said "no" to the building owner who was trying to get his enormous building painted for the cost of the primer and washed my hands of it.
But, as I said earlier, I had a lot of fun doing that painting, meeting and working with other artists, and being a rebel for a little while. It was a good time, and even though it was an abject failure as a cohesive artwork, it was worth doing and I wouldn't in hind sight have wanted to miss that particular experience. I have, of course, thought of a hundred ways I could have still had a great time, but produced a much better piece of public art. It took the worst looking building in town and turned it into a bizarre WTF!? landmark for a while. Ordinarily, and other other circumstances, I would and could have repainted the offensive parts of the mural and made it a very cool thing, but in this situation, it would have caused hurt feelings and ill will. I had no choice but to let the ugly thing stand "as is." Lesson learned.
Actually, I learned several lessons:
*Have an overall design with every major element worked out ahead of time. Stick to it unless you see a minor change that will improve the painting as it goes up. Think long and hard about allowing major changes unless they clearly make the painting better.
*Never, ever(!) trust the improvisations of others unless you can paint over it. In a situation like the one above, had it worked, I would not have gotten any credit - but since it absolutely sucked, I got the blame. Never put yourself in this position. Walk away from any project that you know will suck before it even happens. In hindsight, I should have walked away when the only funding I could find was from people who thought they could find some advertising benefit from a community service project. Those are the exact opposite of people who make that kind of project successful.
* A gaggle of artists makes a herd of cats seem like a well trained army, marching pristine formations. For this reason, I seldom use assistants, it's usually faster to do the work myself. Artists have egos, if you have no choice but to paint over their work, do what you must, but expect them to read you for trash to everyone they know. The best thing is to try to fix their work just enough to fit the mural, while not actually obliterating every brush stroke. It lets them save face - the more of their work you can leave without it destroying the continuity, the better - that is an art in itself.
Under other circumstances, working with a team of artists could create some fine work. Not that way. Please, don't repeat my mistakes.
Chapter 5 - Community Projects
Community projects aren't for the feint of heart. Murphy's Law is always in effect. Usually, as an artist, you are very appreciated and respected. That will sometimes not be the case when doing community projects. You will always be the primary financial contributor to any free community mural project. Go in with your eyes wide open. Community projects that are successful will always have the credit given to those other than the muralist who actually designs and does the bulk of the work, usually a politician, socialite, someone who contributed some bit of the money to buy paint, or somebody who had the bright idea of, "gosh, we should have a mural painted." This is true even if you put up your all of the money for paint and work free, and even when it was 100% your idea to begin with - but the muralist will be given 100% of the blame if the project turns out badly. This means, if you take on a free project, and community helpers do a bad job, which is often (usually) the case, you will have to go in after them and repaint the whole project by yourself and take no credit for it. Even with good artists helping, you will no doubt have to repaint a lot of it because the styles and brush strokes won't match, and the work completely lacks cohesion. Also, If you are hard at work, (and you will be) the press will always interview those who don't seem to be doing much of anything. Do not expect the press to even mention your name or use your picture unless you are extremely attractive and photogenic (which I am not), except possibly as an afterthought, as just someone who happened to be there painting. Count on everyone else taking credit for the project if it's going well. What may seem worse still, is that you will be asked to do free work for many people and businesses in that town until the day you die, because you did that one for free. Some people will assume you work cheap or free all the time. Churches are usually the worst offenders - I have been asked not only to work for months free, but also to pay for the paint.
You will most often either have to design the project from the ground up, or use design ideas from some committee or contest, and try to work them into something resembling a cohesive artwork, and give all the credit to the committee or contest winner/winners, even if the final design doesn't resemble in whole or part, what you were handed - which is, as you may already know, much harder than designing it yourself from scratch. I have never once been handed a design that would actually work for the space the mural was to be painted, although I have on rare occasion been handed some nice drawings that could work with some modification or other ideas incorporated. The trick is to keep enough of the design elements to make it strongly resemble the designs you are given so whoever did it can still call it theirs. Sometimes, you can only take a general idea, but still, give ALL the credit to the person who had the idea, yes even if the idea is "how about a sunset" or "how about a landscape." In a community project, give the credit to others because they are part of the community. This may not seem fair to you, because you are also part of the community, but if you take credit for what you do for a living, while not acknowledging the ideas of others, you are being ungracious. If you are handed a truly hideous picture of, say, a purple horse, you can't for any reason simply blow up an awful drawing of that exact purple horse, because that's what they said they wanted. You redraw a beautiful purple horse (call it it a "tweak" on their idea) in a similar pose to what you were handed and call it their idea. Keep your own ego out of it. Try to maintain the spirit of the drawing, but improve that which needs improvement to something that will look good on a mural. Remember, you will never get credit for the good things, but you will be blamed for everything bad, because you are the one who knows what will, and will not work in a large piece of art. The only exception to this I can think of, is if a winning design is a very crude drawing by a very small child - in that case, it might be nice to have an actual depiction of the exact children's drawing blown up to mural size, making the brush strokes look like crayon or finger paint - that could be very cool, and in that case, the more exact the better. In fact, that just gave me an idea for my next community project that will cost me thousands of dollars worth of work. It will take a lot of time to paint something that perfectly looks like finger paint.
If you are going to do a community project, do it because you are trying to do something good for the community and can actually afford the time and money. And be well aware that you will lose TWICE as much time and work as if you had painted the whole thing yourself if there is any complexity to the project at all. It is not tax deductible, so you can't write any of it off as a charitable contribution unless it is benefiting some registered charity (which it never is). Also, don't expect to get a lot (or any) local mural work out of it, because the credit for the project will not go to you unless it turns out badly, then everyone else will distance themselves from the project. The many days or weeks you are working on the mural by yourself for free will be completely ignored by just about everyone, but the day or two when you have some help by people well known in the town will be the days that the press takes pictures, and interviews anyone and everyone else but you. And, it is often the case that several people seem to know when the press will show up, because they are the people who called them, manage to be there with a brush in their hand when the press shows up, and disappear as soon as the photo-op ends, often without ever having so much as dipped the brush in any actual paint, never to be seen or heard from again. This is often more the rule than the exception. In the most recent public mural I did, the only acknowledgement I received from the local downtown network would be in the "and all the other numerous volunteers" section - I wasn't mentioned at all, even though I had put the design together, drawn it on the surface before the public painting day, painted 98% of the mural after the under-painting day was done, spent most days painting by myself, and donated more cash than anyone.
If you are lucky, you will get one full days work out of the crowd who show up on under-painting day, after you have drawn the project and turned it into something of a "paint by numbers" - which takes much, much longer than drawing it up for yourself or a real artist to paint, in fact it sometimes takes as long as it would take to actually paint the whole mural if it is very detailed - then you are pretty much on your own after that - a few folks will show up sporadically to help do the actual painting, (which really doesn't usually require an under-painting of the sort that you will need for a non-skilled community paint day) but it isn't frequent, and often, you will lose those whole days because you will have to either spend all of your time watching over volunteers, or you will have to fix what they have done. The many thousands of dollars you are losing because you are doing a free project that is taking time you could otherwise spend making money will seldom, if ever, be recognized. You aren't just giving away one free mural, it is often closer to two free murals worth of time and effort. Just be aware of this, don't let it hurt your feelings, and don't do it if you can't afford it. The world needs more people who actually get the work done and don't worry about being popular. If you go into a community project with expectations that it will benefit you personally, you will be disappointed. I have done several such projects, and the only benefit I've ever derived is that I have made the world a little better, and often met some nice people along the way - that's enough for me. The one and only time a project went south (detailed above under "smaller concerns"), and I was not in a position to repaint other artists work, I got grief about it for years. If you are not a person who is OK with this, don't let yourself get involved in such a project. These projects are to bring a community together, to make them feel good about themselves and feel like they are doing something to make their town a better place, they are not for your personal benefit. The fact that you could do the project in half the time if not for all the other people helping is beside the point - it's a coming together for the community. The fact that someone else will usually take the credit doesn't eliminate the fact that you did something good for the world. A few people will know that it was you who did it, even though you will usually have to let others sign their names to it because it was their "idea".
For you, it will be a learning experience every single time you do it. It's a study in human nature, and a way to pass on your knowledge to a new generation. It's also a great way to learn the value of selflessness. There's too damned little selflessness in the world, artists above all others, need to lead the way. What you get isn't money, or even recognition, but a big piece of your soul that left most of us sometime around puberty.
Chapter 6 - A few thoughts before we get to the nuts and bolts
When I retire, I can paint only the designs that I want to leave with the world, without worry about selling them and without concern over how long they took to paint - if someone buys them, fine - if not, I can feel good that I had the chance to paint them and feel fairly certain that they will find homes someday, whether or not I'm around to see it. I just feel lucky to have been able to spend my life doing what I love.
I happen to think the world needs more murals. Now that I'm older, with white hair (and damn little of even that) and heading toward my codger-hood, I can honestly say with what could be acquired wisdom (or it could be gas, it's hard to tell at this age) that a little competition makes us all better. The gallery option is still open to you if you like it and don't mind the games. I sometimes sell my smaller paintings and finished mural designs through galleries but the wide variation of styles can confuse the average art buyer - the gallery thing seems better for the artists who only paint in one style and (most of the time) have a second source of income.
In the course of a week I might paint in half a dozen different styles - some are combinations of established styles and some are something brand new I invent to match the subject, the customers personality, or how I'm feeling that day. It is fun and it keeps me creative. As I age, I tend to do more of what I really enjoy, which is realism. I noticed many years ago that the art world tries hard to box artists in to one single style, to recognize at a glance who did the painting. Once your work starts to sell, the gallery owners want you to keep cranking out the same type of work over and over. My formal education was in music composition (scholarship was in composition and multimedia production), we used to say of composers whose work always sounded the same after they achieved some notoriety that "they wrote a good piece once and have been writing it ever since." I see artists who repeat themselves much the same way, but I don't blame them, and where in music it is the worst thing you can do, in art it is not only expected but forced upon you. The pressure the visual artist feels to work in this formulaic manner is not something with which I agree. I can understand it from a business standpoint, but I can't help but think it limits the time an artist can spend working at his/her craft before becoming hopelessly out of style. So many great artists who had great careers have died destitute and out of favor that I think we should all step back and take a look at how we have allowed ourselves to be marketed. I tried for a time to work that way the first time one of my styles found ready buyers, but it bored me to tears, becoming stale like factory work. I suffered and so did the art.
Picasso reinvented himself many times - it kept him fresh, gave him a very long career and only late in life did he descend into self-indulgence, painting whatever worthless nonsense came to mind because he knew it would sell if he signed it. I have tried to reinvent my art often, but I admit it is harder now that I am older, a few styles feel like the comfort of home and I now tend to stick to those. I once did long, open ended series in similar styles but many pieces in the same series still look like they were painted with a different hand (as well they often were, since I paint both right and left handed to ward off muscle fatigue) or a different artist altogether, drawing their consistency more from choice of subject matter than from technical style. Perhaps the only thing usually still present in my painting from childhood forward (regardless of style) is optical mixing of colors and a shifting or exaggeration of colors from what is real, to what makes me feel more engaged. From a distance, the work can look like the colors are realistic and blended on the palette, up close they are often not.
There seems to be a conception that true artists must starve, be miserable, wear all black and have drug problems. I'm probably the happiest guy on the planet, love life, don't take drugs, wear black only when it's a gift, and I eat like a Clydesdale - I guess I'm not a true artist, but whatever it is I do, I love it. A good friend of mine has a slogan at the end of all of his e-mail - "Do what you love for a living and you'll never work another day in your life." He owns and operates a hotel in the Caribbean and loves it. Whatever you do, may you all find happiness in your unemployment while making the world a more beautiful place.
Chapter 7 - Scaling a design to mural size
Let me first begin with the obvious. Absolutely the easiest way to scale a design to mural size is to project the image onto the surface and trace it. Many murals have been done with this method and it is close to foolproof, provided you have a projector with enough power to project the image to the size it needs to be while maintaining a sharp edge. It works best for small murals where you can control the lighting in the room or do your projection at night. Let me warn you. If you are using photographs or designs that are not your own for a commercial mural, you MUST get permission in writing from the original photographer or artist. If someone wants you to do a Disney mural, forget it. You will not get permission and they will sue you if they get wind of it, and they hire people to search out unlicensed usage so if it ever shows up on someones' website or Facebook post, they will find it. The search software to detect copyright infringement is killer. Just use your own design unless the customer gives you one of their own photos to use, and they promise you in writing that they own the image, then it's on them.
Simply blowing up a photo or smaller painting to mural size and painting it is easy. Even the colors can be copied directly from the photo or original painting. With a projector, even a person who can't draw can do it, provided they can paint. Take the photo or painting to any color matching counter at a hardware store and order however much you need of each main color in it of high quality house paint, paint it, then clear coat it (if it's exterior) with a UV protectant polyurethane. That will last about 20 years. If you need something exterior to last longer, you will have to spend a boatload more money on Golden (brand) mural paint, and matching UV protectant clear finish. You will not be able to color match and order exact colors, so you will be mixing each color by eye, which takes much longer and you will need to charge accordingly.
When you can't use a projector
There are many, many circumstances that will force you to hand draw a design. Buildings in well lit cities, murals too large for the projector, too high off the ground for a projector, and a dozen other reasons make using a projector impossible. Don't consider suicide, here's how to do it just as well without a projector - really, you can be just as accurate without one. I almost never use a projector. It takes a little longer, but it isn't bad. Back when I started doing this, (my grandchildren will insist that dinosaurs were a real threat at that time) projectors that would blow up a sharp image to mural size were impossible to find, and they aren't easy to find or afford now. You do have to be able to actually draw for all of these methods, but I'm assuming everyone who is reading this is already an artist, so I will also assume you have the drawing skills.
Method 1 The Albrect Durer or "Grid" Method
This method is for the most complex designs and extremely large murals. I suggest artists who have never painted on a large-scale use this method the first time they paint a non-projected mural, it offers the best chance of success. I still do this myself when the size or complexity of a project dictates, although I now use a number of shortcuts that will be explained later. The grid gives you a great point of reference for where everything is and how large it is in relation to everything else. It was originally invented by German artist Albrecht Durer around 1500AD. Durer was a stickler for accuracy and came up with this method to make it easier to stay completely true to proportion. Modifications of this system also make it easier to convert small scale drawings or photographs to mural size. It can also be modified to change the perspective of a drawing to a mural that will only be viewed at a severe angle, such as a mural high on a wall, to match the viewers point of view.
Begin with a design drawn in color or black and white to a relative scale. Computers are great for this since you can easily modify any design to the size needed simply by changing the print size to whatever you want. Simply photograph your original design and scale it to some even division of your finished mural size. I usually use 1 inch = 1 foot or 1 yard when possible but the math is easy for any size. I realize I am writing to artists, so I won't print my equations, since they might make some artists heads explode and I can't have that on my conscience - you'll figure it out your own way. Draw a one inch grid over the original design, or on a clear piece of plexiglas that can be placed over the original, and a one foot (or yard) grid on the blank mural surface. Snapping chalk lines on the mural surface does a good job and is easy to clean off after the drawing is done - you may need an assistant to help hold the other end of the chalk line if it is a surface that doesn't allow you to hold the other end with a small nail, such as when working on brick, steel or concrete. When the grids are complete, use them to keep your drawing in proportion. One caveat is that it is easy to miscount your grid or skip one and goof up everything after that. I mark grids a,b,c... across and 1,2,3 down to make it easier to keep track of where I am. On really huge murals, I mark each box on the wall so I don't run the risk of being off by one square.
When painting on brick or cinder block, count and measure the blocks and draw them to scale over a copy of the original. They save you the trouble of drawing a grid on the wall - but the added time and frustration of painting on such a rough surface more than makes up for it.
I recommend at least on your first few murals on truly hard to work with surfaces that you fill as many pits as possible with multiple coats of a thick base paint and that you do a full b/w rendering on detailed sections where absolute accuracy is required - it is just a personal preference. I find that it is faster to have much of the dark - light value in place before I begin laying in the color. Value can get a little blurred when you are standing close to a large painting with a severe texture and there is a strong tendency to overshadow or under-shadow. One other advantage is that you can colorize the drawing quickly with transparent paints especially on an interior mural. This painting of Willy Nelson shows about what the extreme of detail is possible on a horrible surface. It looks OK from a distance, but up close it is often frustrating to the artist to try to paint detail when the surface itself is pushing your detail brush in directions you don't want it to go. It takes forever to detail any area for close viewing on this surface - charge accordingly.
If you do not want to draw the grid directly on the original design, draw the grid on a piece of rigid plastic or thin Plexiglas and lay it over the top. If you always use a 1 inch = 1 foot or yard ratio this plastic grid will save you the time and trouble of redrawing the grid each time. The same applies to bricks and cinder blocks as well - you will find that most are standard sizes and you will probably use the plexiglas grid many times.
The MOST(!) important thing is to frequently back away from your painting to the distance that it will be viewed when finished. Do this as often as possible and make corrections as you go (a golf cart or motor scooter is very handy for extremely large projects.) Do not remain close to the painting through the duration of the project, problems that can easily be fixed at one stage can be difficult to repair later, they have a domino effect.
Chapter 8 - Murals on Stairs
Stairs are tough if your design includes curves. Because the lines change slightly as you focus and refocus a projector to a different focal distance, you can rarely if ever project the image without a lot of exacting calculations. Also, most projectors lack the power to display a sharp image far enough away to get to the top of a long staircase. By far the easiest way around this is to design using a lot of straight lines, but that won't always be possible. The problem with stairs is that no matter what you do, there will only be one exact spot, at one exact eye level, that the painting will look perfect. If you are by yourself, the drawing will take many times as long as if you have an assistant - well worth hiring someone. The assistant doesn't even need to be an artist. Place the assistant on the stairs with masking tape and tell them where to put the tape by literally drawing by eye from the viewpoint. You'll quickly work out a hand signal system. After the main outlines are roughed in, it gets much easier. Paint the lines the along edge of the tape and remove it - this will give you your skeleton.
Obviously, this will work for some designs, but if you are going to try to do something like a portrait that has to be perfectly accurate, it will be very difficult with this method. For something like that, you will need to do a lot of geometry. You will need to fix the distance, the angle of view for each stair and the exact portion of each stair visible from the vantage point- which is why you will rarely see it done, it isn't impossible, but it is very time consuming. If the vantage point isn't across the street, you can find the visible area by using a strong, long string pulled absolutely taught from the exact vantage point, across the top of each stair and to the point on the stair that creates a straight line to the vantage point. You can also create a grid using string from the vantage point, but getting the horizontal part of the grid is hard, since it will require either some guesswork, or some equipment I've never used. You can usually eyeball it and get it pretty close, but be doubly diligent to try to get it right. The details of this are a bit out of the scope of a basic primer book, so I will leave it for later.
Chapter 9 - Paints and Brushes:
There is no difference between a mural and any other painting - the better the paint, the easier it is to use and the longer it will last.
For interior murals, I suggest using the very best oils or acrylics you can find at your art supply store. Use what you would use on canvas.
Exterior murals can be done with a variety of paint:
There are some good exterior house paints on the market if the mural is on a budget. They have the advantage that you can get all of the major color areas color matched to the exact colors in the design. They don't blend well on a pallet or on the wall, but with some experimentation, you can learn to do it. I seldom use them, but for some things, they are fine. Just get the highest quality paint they have anywhere but WalMart. Paints made for WalMart seem to be lower quality than even the same brand bought elsewhere. I don't know if this is true, but I have never been happy with any paint purchased there. Clear coat the finished product with UV polyurethane.
For simple designs that do not require blending colors, professional quality sign paint will do well and will last a long time. Sign paint does not play well with others. If you start using sign paint, use it for the whole mural, don't try to mix it with something else and don't expect it to blend with another brand. It usually costs about $100 per gallon.
Spray paint: If you are accustomed to using an airbrush, you will find that spray paint works very well. The big problem is that of color fastness. Most spray paints (especially the cheap stuff) fade quickly and unevenly. The advantages are that spray paint can be very quick and cheap to use. If you have a mural that is low budget, temporary by nature and not expected to last for many years, spray paint might be your best bet. You can add years of life to it by applying a UV protectent clear coat after you are finished but, be aware that heavy coats of UV clear coat will yellow with age. If you subtract a little of the yellow end of the spectrum from your original painting it works well. You must reapply the clear coat every year or two, or tell your customer that they will need to do that for longest life. Always use a gas mask when working with spray paint and be nice to the environment by using only paint that has non ozone depleting propellant.
Multi surface paints: There are some paints on the market that I hear are fairly decent for general mural use called multi surface paints. They are better than house paint but still do not have the pigment concentration for extreme sun exposure. They usually cost less than $100 per gallon. I haven't used them personally, so I can't really give you much more on these. They seem a bit expensive for what they are, but if you are painting on a surface that nothing wants to stick to, they may be your only choice. I was once hired to paint some domes for a theme park in Dubai to resemble each of the planets. The domes were to be made out of some sort of synthetic material - I couldn't find anything that would stick to it, it was a lot like try to figure out how to paint on a teflon skillet. Sadly, I had to turn the job down when I failed to find a paint or a chemist willing to tackle the adhesion problem. Had multi surface paints existed back then, I might have been able to do that job - which would have paid a fortune. I don't know if the park was ever built. I doubt anyone else was able to find something to stick to it at the time, but it is possible that multi-surface paints were designed for just that material. If nothing else sticks, try multi-surface paint. I have recently become hipped to the fact that the Golden paint company has chemists who love a challenge - had I known that, I probably could have called them and had them figure out the problem for me - but at that time, I had a lot going on and my own trials came up with nothing, so I declined the job.
Acrylic Mural paint: There are now paints designed exclusively for exterior murals and they are wonderful, easy to use and smooth blending. Some have many times the amount of pigment of regular paints, making them very colorfast. They are also very expensive, hundreds of dollars per gallon. Golden makes what seems to be the best at this point. Well worth it in my opinion but customers may balk at the cost. They are easier to work with than most other paint and therefore faster, so some of the cost is offset in less work time. Golden also makes the best non-yellowing UV protecting clear coat, also expensive, but worth it. Golden even has a special blend of UV clear coat formulated with extra hardener made specifically for stairs that will be getting a lot of foot traffic.
I avoid Cromacolour, they once made a good product of which they sent me a few small test jars - they held up beautifully under extreme circumstances during my tests. When I ordered many, many gallons worth for a large mural, they apparently sent me a lower grade of paint and it started fading the very first year! Nobody can afford to repaint after one year.
Brushes
Always use the best you can afford. Good brushes save you time by applying the paint more evenly and money by lasting longer. On the occasions that I have lost my senses and tried to save a few bucks buying cheap brushes I soon found myself driving back to the art supply store cursing my own stupidity. You will ruin a lot of brushes painting murals. Depending on the wall texture, they can be a real expense, don't forget to include their cost in your price. Even the best brushes will lose their edge after painting they way we must paint as artists. It isn't like painting a wall one color with a brush, we give the brush a real workout and it takes it's toll quickly. Once a brush is toast and won't keep a clean edge without slowing you down to a crawl, clean it well and use it for blending or scuttling until it's too bad even for that.
For large areas of single color and for priming the canvas or wall I like painting pads, they are fast and last a long time. I also buy a variety of large, wide brushes, they save time and it looks better to have one large brush stroke instead of many smaller ones in many situations. They are costly, but tend to last longer since they are only used for certain types of long flowing strokes.
For detailing, I use any good, stiff natural bristle and sable for fine details and more subtle work.
For certain things I use an airbrush, they are the best and fastest way I know to produce soft gradations and clouds. Large areas of sky and clouds can be painted in just a few minutes using an airbrush or air gun for the really big murals that would take hours to produce any other way. I don't like the look of paintings produced solely with an airbrush, the surface lacks a painterly quality that I happen to love, but for some things, you just can't beat 'em. It is definitely worth spending a few bucks on a cheap airbrush and compressor and learning to use it.
Chapter 10 - Other assorted crap:
Priming walls and Canvas:
Prime your canvas the way you would prime any other oil painting except you should always prime both sides for a large mural on canvas if it will be installed with wallpaper paste. The front with Gesso and the back with any good exterior wall primer/sealer.
Prime interior walls first with a standard exterior primer (exterior grade primers are higher quality and will not accidentally reconstitute while you are painting on the gesso) and then prime again with gesso.
Prime exterior walls with at least two coats of Exterior primer - no gesso.
Scaffolding, Lifts etc.
You must consider the cost of scaffolding or scissor lifts, bucket trucks etc. into your price. I prefer scissor lifts when doing exterior murals on flat ground, bucket lifts when on uneven ground. Scaffolds are a pain, and I've had them stolen from job sites. Scissor lifts and bucket lifts are too heavy to steal (unless you leave the keys in them) and are usually faster to work with, but they can cost thousands to rent for the length of time it may take to finish your mural. Be sure to get a firm rental price in the area you will be painting before tendering your bid. If you get outbid by someone because they are too foolish to price in the cost of the lift, that's on them. You may end up getting the call later when the other artist realizes they can't do the job for the price they bid.
Restoration
Restoration work is a specialty. If you know what you are doing, It takes (sometimes) considerably less time than an original, so the cost to the customer can be much less. Although paint cost is the same, the time you'll spend with the lift rentals will usually be about half to three-quarters provided the original painting isn't terribly deteriorated. There isn't much to say about restoration in a book of this limited scope - don't attempt to restore a painting that you couldn't do in the exact style as an original, using the same brushstrokes (google "worst art restoration ever" to see why - I have had to repaint badly restored art, and it's no picnic because a bad restorer can do a LOT of damage) you aren't just freshening up the paint, you ARE repainting the whole thing. If an exterior mural is badly damaged, or paint is separating, you may need to completely obliterate it, re-prime and use photographs or original designs where available to make an exact copy of the original, so in that case, you will spend every bit as much time as an original. When the original has been badly re-painted by someone else at some point but isn't so bad that it has to be completely redone, you'll need to go back to the original design and redraw all of the poorly done portions - figure this into your time. Sometimes, the major flaws aren't apparent in a photograph of the current condition and you only get the full measure of the problem when you are standing at the wall - sometimes the people for whom you are painting will be very understanding, sometimes not. It's always best to get a first hand look at the wall before figuring a bid, but sometimes that isn't possible. Some paintings take longer to restore than the original - the Sistine chapel restoration took 20 years - the original took four years. Generally speaking, the older the painting, the longer it will take to properly restore.
I have been doing this kind of work for a very long time, which has made me fast at painting restorations. I recognize what types of paint I'm looking at, and know what I will need to do to make sure the paint I use adheres well. I also know to enlist experts where needed. You can do this also with chemical paint tests. Some older exterior murals, and many interior murals were painted with oil based paint - acrylic will NOT stick without an intermediate coat of a primer which will stick to both, which will require a complete re-drawing. I do not suggest trying to repaint an exterior mural in any oil based paint - oil based exterior paints of a high enough quality for mural work really don't exist anymore. This is dangerous territory for a novice. My best suggestion would be that you wait until you have many years of experience and study before you attempt any restoration work. There are many things that can go wrong, and there is too much to cover for a book on the basics of mural painting. Interior murals painted in oil can be restored with a high quality artists oil paint provided the paintings are not more that 60 years old. Any painting predating that should have the paints tested by a chemist to make sure that they are compatible. It is always best to use the exact paint as the original. The older the painting, the harder that is to achieve - sometimes you have to hand grind pigments and make up special historically accurate emulsions - that's far beyond the scope of this book.
There are several reasons why the original paint may be coming off, and they must be properly diagnosed or they will continue to happen, taking your new paint along with it - even if your restoration looks perfect, it won't last if you didn't fix the problem correctly. Sometimes you actually have to sandblast the original painting off of a wall - or repaint it on new boards because the original boards were never properly sealed against moisture. Restoration itself deserves several entire thick books, and they would only scratch the surface. When you are doing a restoration, you are responsible for maintaining history - it must be done absolutely right, and in the style of the original, using original materials. It's a specialty that isn't well suited to many, probably most artists. The fact that I have spent my life painting in many styles, makes me particularly well suited. But, even I won't touch some restorations with a ten foot pole - there are specialties within specialties and working on crumbling plaster carries a potential for disaster that can't even be predicted.
That's it!
I am trying to be brief and this should get you started. Everything else you'll probably figure out along the way. This little book is the meat and bones basics of painting murals. If you have specific questions - ask me through the "contact" page and I will try to help. Sometimes it might take me a little while to get to my email if I'm on the road, but I will try to answer all questions to the best of my ability.
If you do not want to draw the grid directly on the original design, draw the grid on a piece of rigid plastic or thin Plexiglas and lay it over the top. If you always use a 1 inch = 1 foot or yard ratio this plastic grid will save you the time and trouble of redrawing the grid each time. The same applies to bricks and cinder blocks as well - you will find that most are standard sizes and you will probably use the plexiglas grid many times.
The MOST(!) important thing is to frequently back away from your painting to the distance that it will be viewed when finished. Do this as often as possible and make corrections as you go (a golf cart or motor scooter is very handy for extremely large projects.) Do not remain close to the painting through the duration of the project, problems that can easily be fixed at one stage can be difficult to repair later, they have a domino effect.
Chapter 8 - Murals on Stairs
Stairs are tough if your design includes curves. Because the lines change slightly as you focus and refocus a projector to a different focal distance, you can rarely if ever project the image without a lot of exacting calculations. Also, most projectors lack the power to display a sharp image far enough away to get to the top of a long staircase. By far the easiest way around this is to design using a lot of straight lines, but that won't always be possible. The problem with stairs is that no matter what you do, there will only be one exact spot, at one exact eye level, that the painting will look perfect. If you are by yourself, the drawing will take many times as long as if you have an assistant - well worth hiring someone. The assistant doesn't even need to be an artist. Place the assistant on the stairs with masking tape and tell them where to put the tape by literally drawing by eye from the viewpoint. You'll quickly work out a hand signal system. After the main outlines are roughed in, it gets much easier. Paint the lines the along edge of the tape and remove it - this will give you your skeleton.
Obviously, this will work for some designs, but if you are going to try to do something like a portrait that has to be perfectly accurate, it will be very difficult with this method. For something like that, you will need to do a lot of geometry. You will need to fix the distance, the angle of view for each stair and the exact portion of each stair visible from the vantage point- which is why you will rarely see it done, it isn't impossible, but it is very time consuming. If the vantage point isn't across the street, you can find the visible area by using a strong, long string pulled absolutely taught from the exact vantage point, across the top of each stair and to the point on the stair that creates a straight line to the vantage point. You can also create a grid using string from the vantage point, but getting the horizontal part of the grid is hard, since it will require either some guesswork, or some equipment I've never used. You can usually eyeball it and get it pretty close, but be doubly diligent to try to get it right. The details of this are a bit out of the scope of a basic primer book, so I will leave it for later.
Chapter 9 - Paints and Brushes:
There is no difference between a mural and any other painting - the better the paint, the easier it is to use and the longer it will last.
For interior murals, I suggest using the very best oils or acrylics you can find at your art supply store. Use what you would use on canvas.
Exterior murals can be done with a variety of paint:
There are some good exterior house paints on the market if the mural is on a budget. They have the advantage that you can get all of the major color areas color matched to the exact colors in the design. They don't blend well on a pallet or on the wall, but with some experimentation, you can learn to do it. I seldom use them, but for some things, they are fine. Just get the highest quality paint they have anywhere but WalMart. Paints made for WalMart seem to be lower quality than even the same brand bought elsewhere. I don't know if this is true, but I have never been happy with any paint purchased there. Clear coat the finished product with UV polyurethane.
For simple designs that do not require blending colors, professional quality sign paint will do well and will last a long time. Sign paint does not play well with others. If you start using sign paint, use it for the whole mural, don't try to mix it with something else and don't expect it to blend with another brand. It usually costs about $100 per gallon.
Spray paint: If you are accustomed to using an airbrush, you will find that spray paint works very well. The big problem is that of color fastness. Most spray paints (especially the cheap stuff) fade quickly and unevenly. The advantages are that spray paint can be very quick and cheap to use. If you have a mural that is low budget, temporary by nature and not expected to last for many years, spray paint might be your best bet. You can add years of life to it by applying a UV protectent clear coat after you are finished but, be aware that heavy coats of UV clear coat will yellow with age. If you subtract a little of the yellow end of the spectrum from your original painting it works well. You must reapply the clear coat every year or two, or tell your customer that they will need to do that for longest life. Always use a gas mask when working with spray paint and be nice to the environment by using only paint that has non ozone depleting propellant.
Multi surface paints: There are some paints on the market that I hear are fairly decent for general mural use called multi surface paints. They are better than house paint but still do not have the pigment concentration for extreme sun exposure. They usually cost less than $100 per gallon. I haven't used them personally, so I can't really give you much more on these. They seem a bit expensive for what they are, but if you are painting on a surface that nothing wants to stick to, they may be your only choice. I was once hired to paint some domes for a theme park in Dubai to resemble each of the planets. The domes were to be made out of some sort of synthetic material - I couldn't find anything that would stick to it, it was a lot like try to figure out how to paint on a teflon skillet. Sadly, I had to turn the job down when I failed to find a paint or a chemist willing to tackle the adhesion problem. Had multi surface paints existed back then, I might have been able to do that job - which would have paid a fortune. I don't know if the park was ever built. I doubt anyone else was able to find something to stick to it at the time, but it is possible that multi-surface paints were designed for just that material. If nothing else sticks, try multi-surface paint. I have recently become hipped to the fact that the Golden paint company has chemists who love a challenge - had I known that, I probably could have called them and had them figure out the problem for me - but at that time, I had a lot going on and my own trials came up with nothing, so I declined the job.
Acrylic Mural paint: There are now paints designed exclusively for exterior murals and they are wonderful, easy to use and smooth blending. Some have many times the amount of pigment of regular paints, making them very colorfast. They are also very expensive, hundreds of dollars per gallon. Golden makes what seems to be the best at this point. Well worth it in my opinion but customers may balk at the cost. They are easier to work with than most other paint and therefore faster, so some of the cost is offset in less work time. Golden also makes the best non-yellowing UV protecting clear coat, also expensive, but worth it. Golden even has a special blend of UV clear coat formulated with extra hardener made specifically for stairs that will be getting a lot of foot traffic.
I avoid Cromacolour, they once made a good product of which they sent me a few small test jars - they held up beautifully under extreme circumstances during my tests. When I ordered many, many gallons worth for a large mural, they apparently sent me a lower grade of paint and it started fading the very first year! Nobody can afford to repaint after one year.
Brushes
Always use the best you can afford. Good brushes save you time by applying the paint more evenly and money by lasting longer. On the occasions that I have lost my senses and tried to save a few bucks buying cheap brushes I soon found myself driving back to the art supply store cursing my own stupidity. You will ruin a lot of brushes painting murals. Depending on the wall texture, they can be a real expense, don't forget to include their cost in your price. Even the best brushes will lose their edge after painting they way we must paint as artists. It isn't like painting a wall one color with a brush, we give the brush a real workout and it takes it's toll quickly. Once a brush is toast and won't keep a clean edge without slowing you down to a crawl, clean it well and use it for blending or scuttling until it's too bad even for that.
For large areas of single color and for priming the canvas or wall I like painting pads, they are fast and last a long time. I also buy a variety of large, wide brushes, they save time and it looks better to have one large brush stroke instead of many smaller ones in many situations. They are costly, but tend to last longer since they are only used for certain types of long flowing strokes.
For detailing, I use any good, stiff natural bristle and sable for fine details and more subtle work.
For certain things I use an airbrush, they are the best and fastest way I know to produce soft gradations and clouds. Large areas of sky and clouds can be painted in just a few minutes using an airbrush or air gun for the really big murals that would take hours to produce any other way. I don't like the look of paintings produced solely with an airbrush, the surface lacks a painterly quality that I happen to love, but for some things, you just can't beat 'em. It is definitely worth spending a few bucks on a cheap airbrush and compressor and learning to use it.
Chapter 10 - Other assorted crap:
Priming walls and Canvas:
Prime your canvas the way you would prime any other oil painting except you should always prime both sides for a large mural on canvas if it will be installed with wallpaper paste. The front with Gesso and the back with any good exterior wall primer/sealer.
Prime interior walls first with a standard exterior primer (exterior grade primers are higher quality and will not accidentally reconstitute while you are painting on the gesso) and then prime again with gesso.
Prime exterior walls with at least two coats of Exterior primer - no gesso.
Scaffolding, Lifts etc.
You must consider the cost of scaffolding or scissor lifts, bucket trucks etc. into your price. I prefer scissor lifts when doing exterior murals on flat ground, bucket lifts when on uneven ground. Scaffolds are a pain, and I've had them stolen from job sites. Scissor lifts and bucket lifts are too heavy to steal (unless you leave the keys in them) and are usually faster to work with, but they can cost thousands to rent for the length of time it may take to finish your mural. Be sure to get a firm rental price in the area you will be painting before tendering your bid. If you get outbid by someone because they are too foolish to price in the cost of the lift, that's on them. You may end up getting the call later when the other artist realizes they can't do the job for the price they bid.
Restoration
Restoration work is a specialty. If you know what you are doing, It takes (sometimes) considerably less time than an original, so the cost to the customer can be much less. Although paint cost is the same, the time you'll spend with the lift rentals will usually be about half to three-quarters provided the original painting isn't terribly deteriorated. There isn't much to say about restoration in a book of this limited scope - don't attempt to restore a painting that you couldn't do in the exact style as an original, using the same brushstrokes (google "worst art restoration ever" to see why - I have had to repaint badly restored art, and it's no picnic because a bad restorer can do a LOT of damage) you aren't just freshening up the paint, you ARE repainting the whole thing. If an exterior mural is badly damaged, or paint is separating, you may need to completely obliterate it, re-prime and use photographs or original designs where available to make an exact copy of the original, so in that case, you will spend every bit as much time as an original. When the original has been badly re-painted by someone else at some point but isn't so bad that it has to be completely redone, you'll need to go back to the original design and redraw all of the poorly done portions - figure this into your time. Sometimes, the major flaws aren't apparent in a photograph of the current condition and you only get the full measure of the problem when you are standing at the wall - sometimes the people for whom you are painting will be very understanding, sometimes not. It's always best to get a first hand look at the wall before figuring a bid, but sometimes that isn't possible. Some paintings take longer to restore than the original - the Sistine chapel restoration took 20 years - the original took four years. Generally speaking, the older the painting, the longer it will take to properly restore.
I have been doing this kind of work for a very long time, which has made me fast at painting restorations. I recognize what types of paint I'm looking at, and know what I will need to do to make sure the paint I use adheres well. I also know to enlist experts where needed. You can do this also with chemical paint tests. Some older exterior murals, and many interior murals were painted with oil based paint - acrylic will NOT stick without an intermediate coat of a primer which will stick to both, which will require a complete re-drawing. I do not suggest trying to repaint an exterior mural in any oil based paint - oil based exterior paints of a high enough quality for mural work really don't exist anymore. This is dangerous territory for a novice. My best suggestion would be that you wait until you have many years of experience and study before you attempt any restoration work. There are many things that can go wrong, and there is too much to cover for a book on the basics of mural painting. Interior murals painted in oil can be restored with a high quality artists oil paint provided the paintings are not more that 60 years old. Any painting predating that should have the paints tested by a chemist to make sure that they are compatible. It is always best to use the exact paint as the original. The older the painting, the harder that is to achieve - sometimes you have to hand grind pigments and make up special historically accurate emulsions - that's far beyond the scope of this book.
There are several reasons why the original paint may be coming off, and they must be properly diagnosed or they will continue to happen, taking your new paint along with it - even if your restoration looks perfect, it won't last if you didn't fix the problem correctly. Sometimes you actually have to sandblast the original painting off of a wall - or repaint it on new boards because the original boards were never properly sealed against moisture. Restoration itself deserves several entire thick books, and they would only scratch the surface. When you are doing a restoration, you are responsible for maintaining history - it must be done absolutely right, and in the style of the original, using original materials. It's a specialty that isn't well suited to many, probably most artists. The fact that I have spent my life painting in many styles, makes me particularly well suited. But, even I won't touch some restorations with a ten foot pole - there are specialties within specialties and working on crumbling plaster carries a potential for disaster that can't even be predicted.
That's it!
I am trying to be brief and this should get you started. Everything else you'll probably figure out along the way. This little book is the meat and bones basics of painting murals. If you have specific questions - ask me through the "contact" page and I will try to help. Sometimes it might take me a little while to get to my email if I'm on the road, but I will try to answer all questions to the best of my ability.
