I’m an absolute beginner when it comes to large scale artwork, but for a while now I’ve been wanting to take my work to a wall somewhere. Taking an idea that started in your head, sketching it then scaling it up to a large wall mural is a real test of an artists abilities and a great way to push yourself out of your comfort zone. Luckily for me the good people at The Corner Gallery had just the right wall for me facing busy Hay street in Subiaco.
My first step was to figure out what I was going to paint. I decided pretty early on that my Musician artwork would be ideal, I just felt it would be perfect for the almost square area I had to work on.
Scaling up was the next challenge, there are 3 ways to do this
1. Old school grid
2. Projection tracing
3. Scribble method (check out a vid by Rhone )
Each method has it’s merits but at this size 2.6 x 2.6m I selected the old school grid system and based everything on 30x30cm grid squares. To speed up the grid drawing I cut out a 30x30cm sheet of thick card and used this as a template for marking. Below I’ve added my reference image that I used with grid overlay.
Next step was getting my colors and gear ready
It was time to draw my grid and get painting, Day one I got my grid up, linework done and all the main blocked in colours. Day 2 I was crossing my fingers I could complete all the fine details but I fell short by perhaps an hour or two. I came back later to clean up some mistakes and stencil in my mark.
All up this was an awesome opportunity and I’m now hungry for the next wall, I did make some mistakes and would maybe do one or two things slightly differently and maybe a bit more practice on the cans would be good but I’m happy with the final wall.
DoodlesinTransit 