Leaves Mural

leaves, pattern, surface decoration, illustration, emulsion paint, mud wall, straw bale house

 

 

I recently finished painting one of my plane tree patterns on a wall plastered with mud in my friends’ straw bale house.

 

 

 

leaves, plane tree, mural, emulsion paint, mud wall, surface decoration, illustration, pattern

plane tree, leaves, pattern, illustration, digital collage

 

Simple lines in white emulsion paint are very effective on the beautifully coloured and textured mud, which still has straw poking through it in some places

 

 

 

 

This is the digital version of the design, you can see its evolution here in one of my previous posts

 

 

 

 

About seven years ago I painted the mural below in the same house, also on a wall plastered with mud, it was then visible in the main living space.

mural, mud wall, emulsion paint

They’ve since built the new internal mud plastered wall to create another room for their expanded family so the first mural is hidden inside the new bedroom.

I enjoyed the whole experience of painting in white on mud so much (and I’m also a bit vain and missed seeing my art work from the living room) so it was lucky that my friends happily agreed to my proposal to paint a mural on the new wall and we settled on a theme of leaves.

This is the bare mud wall

mud wall, straw bale house

I made this plan for the mural in Photoshop, using the cut out, inverted line work of my original pattern

mural, plan, leaves, pattern, surface illustration, plane trees

I then ‘Photoshopped’ it to the photograph of the bare wall  to check on the layout before transferring the design to the wall

mural plan, plane tree, leaves, surface illustration

I started by projecting the image onto the wall and drawing the outline in white pencil but ran into technical difficulties with the electrical equipment. I had to resort to plan B which meant tracing the pattern using chalk on the reverse surface of a printed template and then penciling over the chalk lines, which was far more messy and time consuming but ultimately effective.

This is a detail of the pencil drawing

leaves, sketch, pencil, mural, plane trees

Here is the partially completed mural

leaves, mural, plane tree, mud wall, emulsion paint, pencil

and a head on view of the completed mural without the added domestic decoration

leaves, mural, plane tree, pattern, surface decoration, illustration, emulsion paint, mud wall

This was a really enjoyable project, completed in many short sessions over a period of several months, combined with delicious lunch visits to my lovely friends.

It also fulfilled my ambition to complete a painted version of one of my digitally designed patterns on a real life wall.

7 Days

7 Days‘ is the title of the fifth and final assignment I completed for my illustration course with the OCA (Open College of the Arts)

The series of 7 patterns (1 for each day of the title) was inspired by a summer boating holiday on the Canal du Midi in the south of France, and also by the wonderful woodblock designs for wallpaper and fabric of Marthe Armitage, the dramatic wallpapers featured in Sherlock the TV series and the films August:Osage County and American Hustle.

The title page shows the location:

digital collage, map of France, canal du midi

I chose 7 themes from the trip and made a motif for each, which I then multiplied to make a pattern:

Day of the 2CV

2CV, digital collage, pattern, car, illustrationDay of the Locks

Canal du Midi, lock, canal boat, digital collage, pattern

Day of the Sunflower

Sunflowers, digital collage, pattern

Day of the Plane Tree

Plane tree, digital collage, illustration, pattern

Day of Patisserie

Patisserie, cake, digital collage, illustration

Day of the Dragonfly

dragonflies, dragonfly, digital collage, pattern, illustration

Day of the Grapevine

grapevine, vinyard, grapevines, digital collage, illustration

 My ultimate aim is to reproduce some if not all of these patterns on wallpaper, fabric and other surfaces.

The method was pretty much the same for each pattern; here’s an outline:

  1. Research photos and sketches made on the spot
  2. Preliminary sketches from the initial research images
  3. Pencil or pen drawing from the sketches
  4. Drawing scanned to Photoshop where the line work was cleaned (by adjusting brightness/contrast, duplicating with the layer blend mode set to multiply and using the eraser tool) and cut out
  5. Colours and textures added in Photoshop layers using scanned handmade collages and marbling, bought papers, flat and graduated digital Photoshop colours and textured colours in Corel Painter12
  6. Duplication of the coloured single unit
  7. Adding a background of flat digital colour or scanned paper
  8. Adding texture to the background

For those who are interested in seeing  the production method for each image in more detail I’ve added them below:

Title page

For the background I made a map of Europe by tracing the outline in pencil onto squared paper

traced-europe-map-kathryn-hockey-artist-illustrator

which I then scanned to Photoshop and inverted

I then collaged the map in Photoshop layers with some bought paper

and marbling I had made using oil paints

and a French flag which I found through an internet search

I distorted the map with the free transform tool and applied my inverted outline of a plane tree and grapevine pattern (methods below), adjusting the layer blending modes, tone, saturation, curves and levels in Photoshop.

I printed the text ‘7 Days a journey in patterns’ from Photoshop , traced it in pencil and scanned the tracing back into Photoshop where I coloured / inverted it


I wanted to show the location of the Canal du Midi, so next I made a collage of another map of France I found through an internet search, applying torn fragments from a French road atlas

working over it in water soluble green crayon and a wash of acrylic paint

before applying a crackle glaze and white acrylic paint to highlight the cracks and scanning it into Photoshop

I traced the outline of the canal in Corel Painter layers from this map I found on the internet and applied it to my cropped collaged map in Photoshop, adjusting the tone and saturation, adding text to mark Toulouse and Sete (the towns at either end of the canal), and creating a border using the brush tool and a scan of aged paper in layers.

I had a practice run at labeling France on a print out my map of Europe (to which I’d applied a crackle glaze and white acrylic paint) with collage and biro

I cut out the collaged label of the lower left version in Photoshop and applied it over my background, including a smaller duplication of the ‘flagged’ France and a smaller duplication with reduced opacity of the Canal du Midi map over the larger ‘flagged’ France map

Finally, in Photoshop, I adjusted the tone and saturation of the background to improve the contrast, added and coloured a boat from the locks pattern (see below) labelled the Canal du Midi on the larger map insert and added an inverted outline of the 2CV drawing (see below).

Patterns:

2CV

Research photo taken in France, I also referred to a photo I found on the internet

Pen drawing

Scanned to Photoshop, line work cleaned and cut out

Coloured in Photoshop

2CV, car, digital collage, illustration

Curves adjusted, image duplicated and scanned paper added in Photoshop layers for background texture

2CV, pattern, car, digital collage, illustration 2CV, car, pattern, digital collage, illustration

Tone adjusted to achieve different coloured versions

Locks

3 sketches made on site to show how the canal boats go ‘up and down hill’ via the lock system

1 of many, many photos I took of the boat in a lock

A series of sketches I made to work out how to show how boats move up and down stream through the lock mechanism in ‘3D’

I traced the final sketch, made a pen drawing and scanned it to Photoshop in 2 parts

The line work is cleaned, duplicated, aligned and cut out in Photoshop

Outline duplicated in Photoshop layers on a scanned paper background with stripes added with the brush tool

Canal locks, digital collage, illustration

Collage and colour applied to the line work in Photoshop layers: leaves with the collaged map of France (see above); water with the brush tool; locks with the photo of concrete shown below

Locks, canal, canal du midi, lock diagram, digital collage, illustration

Finally the single unit is duplicated and stripes of scanned blue paper are added in Photoshop layers. I also added a final outline layer over the top to improve definition. The repeated unit is reminiscent of the form of Tibetan thangka art

Sunflowers

Research photos taken on the spot

Rough sketches for possible pattern layouts, I wanted to show the sunflowers rotating, as if towards the sun

Pencil drawings

Sunflower1-kathryn-hockey-artist-illustrator-web

Drawings scanned to Photoshop, line work cleaned, trimmed and cut out

Sunflower-3-kathryn-hockey-artist-illustrator--web

Pattern trials made by duplicating layers in Photoshop

Sunflowers coloured in Photoshop layers: yellow centres and green parts collaged with different tonal versions of the France collage map (see above); petals with flat and graduated digital colour

Collaged sunflowers duplicated to form single unit of repeat

Single unit duplicated and flipped vertically

Sunflower-blue-kathryn-hockey-artist-illustrator-web

Colour and pattern trials

Sunflower-blue-collage1-kathryn-hockey-artist-illustrator-web

I finally settled on a blue background, to represent the summer sky, adding texture to it via a scanned canvas

Plane Tree

Planted between 1681-1810, plane trees line long lengths of the Canal du Midi and are dying because of a fungus but I decided not to portray the dying trees in favour of ‘aesthetic delectation’.

Sketch made on site

plane-tree-photo-kathryn-hockey-artist-illustrator-web

1 of many research photos taken on site, I also referred to this Natural History Museum photo

Plane-tree-pattern-sketch2kathryn-hockey-artist-illustrator-web

Rough sketches to work out a single repeating unit

Pen drawing of the single unit

Single unit duplicated in Photoshop layers

Pattern line work inverted

Yellow tonal version of my collaged map of France added as a background to the inverted cut out line work. It overpowered the pattern which lacks definition

I redrew the single unit in pencil, adding more detail

Drawing scanned to Photoshop, line work cleaned and cut out

Plane-Tree-collage-kathryn-hockey-artist-illustrator-web

Collaged in Photoshop layers with my France collage map

Line work inverted and tone of collage adjusted, I love these autumnal shades but my pattern needed to be summery green

Layer effects applied to inverted line work

The version I decided to repeat

Pattern variations

Patisserie

Research photos

Pen drawings made from photos

Drawings scanned to Photoshop, line work cut out, inverted, duplicated and coloured in Photoshop and Corel Painter12

Coloured cakes duplicated to make a pattern

cakes, patisserie, digital collage, illustration

 Inverted line work introduced to background to add depth, subtle granular texture added

cakes, patisserie, digital collage, illustration

Closer crop

Dragonfly

Research photo

Partial pen drawing

Drawing scanned to Photoshop, cleaned, part duplicated and flipped horizontally

Playing with tone and saturation settings

Line work inverted

Playing with tone and saturation settings for the inverted version

Inverted line work multiplied

Line work on a scanned paper background

Multiplied

A4 crop

Grapevine

Research photos

Preliminary sketches from photos

Pen drawing

Scanned and duplicated

The single unit was collaged in Photoshop layers with the following material:

marbling I made with oil paints

scanned to Photoshop and tone/saturation adjusted for the grapes

my collaged France map for the vine leaves

textured paper for the ground

textured paper for the vine trunks

The duplicated collage

A closer crop