Christ and His Creatures (Mural)
To see final artwork please scroll to the photosets at the end of this post. If reading this from Twitter, please visit laurelnoellewilliamsart.tumblr.com for the full post with concept art, process photos, etc., if you are interested.Ā Please also note that this post is from fall of 2018 and is being re-posted after the closure of another website.
Itās been quite a while since my last post but Iām finally back. For the past six weeks Iāve been working on a mural for the Corona Seventh-Day Adventist Church and I can now share it with you.
The mural was commissioned for a Sabbath (church) school room for toddlers. I was asked to cover four approximately 30ā x 10ā walls and the theme was Noahās Ark. I was also asked to include Jesus in the painting and to go heavy on the plant life so that there would be a lot of green and blue present. Within these parameters, I decided to go for a storybook kind of realism; almost realistic but with an extra dose of vivid color and childlike fantasy. I also wanted to include a lot of specific and rare species of animals so that it would be educational as well. You will find a few of the typical lions and tigers and bears (oh my!) but mixed in with a lynx, lemur, llamas, etc. Wow, those all start with āLāā¦and I thought I was mixing it up! Oh well, anywayā¦.
As the walls were already covered with another mural it took some time to get them repainted white. Another painting company did this part for me so in the meantime I worked out some concept sketches for approval. I did these sketches in ProCreate on my iPad Pro and they ended up being pretty close to the final work. To do them, I took pictures of the actual walls that Iād be covering, āwhited outā the current painting on the walls, did line āinkā drawings of what Iād be painting and then filled it in with some color just to get an idea of what it would look like. In the images you can see the actual doors, windows and cabinets, so donāt be alarmed if something looks off.Ā
After getting the concept approved, I moved on to collecting the materials Iād need for painting. There were many things involved but obviously the main ones were paint and brushes. For paint I went with Behr Ultra interior paint in the eggshell finish so that the end result would be close to matte but just shiny enough to be cleaned and wiped off if necessary. Iām told itās also good for painting over or adding to later. I chose gallon-size amounts in colors close to what I would use for a normal canvas painting: titanium white, mars black, cadmium light yellow hue, permanent rose, ultramarine blue, Prussian blue, burnt siena, yellow ochre and alizarin red. I also picked some sky blue and grass green since it would be used so often. Behr had different names for the paints but when comparing the colors to my tubes, they were pretty close. For some of the tight details I did actually use my regular tubes of Liquitex heavy and/or soft body paint as well.
As for brushes, I used a hand roller for some of the wide open areas but I also used regular house painting brushes and āsmallerā acrylic painting brushes. These brushes were to add details and texture but were large for a canvas painting, so nearly the size of a 1ā or 2ā house-brush. I also used a sponge for the clouds and bushes. (The plastic tubs in the photoset were for mixing large amounts of the same colors for the clouds, etc. On the color sample cards, I went with the deepest shade of each card.)
After getting the materials together, I set to work tracing my original concept drawings to the walls by using a portable Epson projector. I removed the colored layer from the drawings as well so that I could see the lines more clearly. I traced in colored pencil, using brown, grey, magenta, blue and a dark yellow to help me mark out what colors Iād be using where and also to help the lines disappear easier with paint over the top (I thought Sharpie would be too dark and show through the paint).Ā
Then I went ahead and taped off the ceiling, carpet, doors, windows and anything else on the walls and got right into painting. As youāll see in the photoset, my process is to work around the entire room at once, from the things furthest in the background to the things closest in the foreground, aside from the animals which I saved for last. I mixed colors and added texture as I went as well. The nice thing about the walls being painted a bright white underneath is that it helped to keep everything brighter so that I didnāt have to work as hard to soften colors. Normally I wouldnāt use straight mars black either but I quickly realized it was a good thing Iād gotten some because it really helped to speed up the process.
As you look at the photoset, you will notice that some of the images look a bit darker or lighter at the top. If they are darker itās because I painted the sky in a gradient. If they are lighter, it may just be the overhead lights causing a glare. My apologies for that. I was unable to get studio lights into the room and I had to keep the window shades down because they only cast more odd slanted shadows on the mural. You might also catch some glimpses of the furniture in the room which was stacked in the center, so once again, my apologies if itās blocking the view.
So without further ado, here is the final mural photographed in four segments and with several close-up shots of some of my favorite animals and details. Also, aĀ big thank you to the Corona SDA Church for sending this project my way and to you All for taking the time to check out my work!Ā
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