Amalia’s Arch Mural

My lovely friend Amalia (herself a talented watercolourist) asked me to design and paint a mural for the back room in her Vejer pharmacy which she is renovating.

arch, mural, drawing, plants, flowers, illustration, valerian, chamomile, passion flower, kava, herbalism, natural remedies, calm, tranquillising, tranqullizing, stress relief, botanical, pharmacy, sketchbook

The room has an impressive archway and will be used as a venue for workshops on health related matters such as diabetes, pre- and post-natal care and managing stress through yoga and meditation.

Amalia’s brief for the mural was that it should include plants and impart a sense of harmony and tranquility.

I selected various plants with tranquililising properties during a web search, printed photos and set about developing drawings in my sketchbook.

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I came up with two options for the mural; one using the arch as a frame for a botanical drawing of an entire valerian plant 

arch, mural, drawing, plants, flowers, illustration, valerian, herbalism, natural remedies, calm, tranquillising, tranqullizing, stress relief, botanical, pharmacy, sketchbook

the other embelleshing the arch itself with a more stylised arrangement of kava, valerian, passionflower and chamomile.

arch, mural, drawing, plants, flowers, illustration, valerian, chamomile, passion flower, kava, herbalism, natural remedies, calm, tranquillising, tranqullizing, stress relief, botanical, pharmacy, sketchbook

Amalia selected the second option which I then developed into a more detailed drawing (below). 

arch, mural, drawing, plants, flowers, illustration, valerian, chamomile, passion flower, kava, herbalism, natural remedies, calm, tranquillising, tranqullizing, stress relief, botanical, pharmacy, sketchbook

I drew just the left half of the design in detail. I then photographed it and used Photoshop to duplicate and flip it to create a mirror image. I printed out the drawing and packed it in my suitcase in readiness for my trip to Vejer.

Being faced with the actual wall was quite daunting at first, I had to be up and down a ladder to gain proper perspective as I worked which took its toll on my neck and ankles! 

passion flower, drawing, pencil, mural, illustration, surface pattern, wall, art

I drew the left side of the mural onto the wall in pencil. When I was happy with the layout I traced it in sections, flipping each one over so that I could copy the mirror image to the right side of the arch.

I painted the white parts first; then came the colour…I made a chart as a mixing guide.

colour, chart, emulsion, acrylic, paint, mix

Using the grey-green wall colour as a base I added tiny amounts of acrylic paint to get all the subtle shades required to colour the mural.

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arch, mural, drawing, plants, passion, flowers, illustration, decoration

The mural is certainly subtle and elegant and has been received very generously.

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The pale colours do make it difficult to photograph the entire mural well however, so here are some details:

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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.