Fresh Murals Co was commissioned by Mustard and Rye to paint a series of murals across five internal pillars in their restaurant.
PROCESS
The brief for this job was to create a series of abstract and classical artworks with a common theme that would adjourn the five concrete pillars that are spread throughout the venue. We started of as always by doing some research into the theme and mocking up a few different concepts for the murals. Once this was done there was a period of consultation with the client, during which we settled on both a style and a colour pallet. We opted to use a five tone grey scale, ranging from black to white, with three different greys spread evenly between them. As well as this grey scale we also added in some metallic copper which we felt added a certain touch of class to the colour palette and really brought the project together.
Once we had our palette in place, we set about finalising the images we were going to use, and designing the abstract shapes that would tie everything together. As always, we mocked up our final design in photoshop, trying to get a even balance of colours across each pillar, and stick to a consistent style throughout the five. We also represented the colour palette on the wall by placing colour swatches on four of the pillars throughout the venue. We place these palette squares strategically, so that wherever you sat, you would never be able to see more than one of them at one time.
Every mural we paint takes a little preparation before we can head to site, and this one was no different. We opted to use emulsion for the bulk of the project so, starting with our black and our white, we hand mixed the three different greys that we were to use. We used spray paint for the copper and also took some matching black, white and greys for any touch ups we might need. Lastly we took some transparent black and white spray paint, to help with the shading on the face that we were planning to paint on the main feature pillar
Once on site we cleared the areas around each pillar of any furniture, laid down dust sheets and removed the televisions from the walls. We then taped off any areas we didn’t want to get paint onto.
First we laid down a base coat of white on everything, and then marked out the two faces and all the different shapes on the pillars. For the larger face we first marked out the shape, and then did all the fine line work with a paint marker pen, before then working back into the piece with some transparent black and white spray paint to create the shading and the highlights that create the finished effect. Doing it this way round also had the added bonus of softening the line work which really added to the feel of this piece.
The second face was a simpler piece to construct, being in straight black and white, it was a case of marking out the outline with a fine black paint marker and then filling it in with black emulsion. The rest of the shapes that covered the remainder of all the pillars were then completed with a mix of masking tape, spirit levels, straight edges and good one fashioned cutting in with a brush.
FINISHED PIECES
This was a really enjoyable one to work on and we were really pleased with how it looked once it was finished.
