Fresh Creative Co. were commissioned by Jones Bar in Mumbles, Swansea to update some blank walls in their garden seating area with a large mural and two separate smaller pieces to accompany it.
The brief was to paint a large brick wall on the big wall with their ‘J’ logo broken out of the wall, allowing you to see the sky behind. The two smaller pieces were to be a stencil style silhouette of Gene Kelly in his famous ‘Singing in the rain’ lamp post pose and a small logo letter J, also done in a monochrome stencil style. Jones bar is situated in the heart of Mumbles in Swansea and run by a great group of guys. Their cocktails are pretty tasty too!
PROCESS
To produce the brick effect for the mural wall we used masking tape and a spirit level, along with a piece of brick sized card to use as a spacer. Using these simple tools we laid out the pattern of the mortar on the wall, leaving us essentially with a giant brick wall stencil in place. We then marked up where the ‘J’ would be broken out of the wall freehand using spray paint. the next step was to paint the bricks. We did this using an external sandstone coloured emulsion, before working back into the bricks with spray paint, giving each one a shadow and a highlight to help increase the effect of the light shining through the hole on the wall. Lastly we randomly filled in some bricks in different shades, keeping within the tonal range of the brickwork.
Next we painted the sky inside the ‘J’ cut out with spray paint, fading from a darker blue at the top down to a light blue at the bottom and adding some white clouds to finish off. We marked up the 3D of the bricks inside the cut out letter. We chose the direction of this 3D based on the positioning of the seating area to help ensure that what you saw from there would be what you would see if there really was a hole in real life. This 3D effect was also painted with spray paint. Finally we peeled off the tape revealing the mortar lines underneath running between the bricks. We then made sure to go through the wall and touch up any places in the mortar where the network of tape had let us down. Here at Fresh Murals Co. we truly believe that you can never do enough quality control checks!
Next came the two smaller stencil pieces. To do these we used a projector to project the images on the wall where we traced out the outline using a black paint marker. We then simply filled these outlines in using black external emulsion and a paintbrush.
FINISHED PIECES
If you’re looking for a good night out in Mumbles you can’t go far wrong with a visit to Jones bar. The staff are great and they really know their cocktails. Try it out, you can thank us later!
