Play list for the European vacation mural

I spent the entire two weeks of this mural painting time listening to classical music from various composers, the "Phantom of the Opera" soundtrack, the soundtrack from the musical "Wicked" and "Beauty and the Beast." It all seemed rather "European" to me.

Notre Dame, day 2

I worked on Notre Dame for about 9 hours total. The wall was textured, making it difficult to paint straight lines......and as you can see...there are a bazillion straight lines. I tried to get every tower, every window, every spire absolutely correct. The finished detailed area was about 4.5'x5.5'. It was actually fun to really, really observe all of the detail in the building. There is a crazy amount of ornamentation on just about every area of Notre Dame, and I can't imagine the time and focus it must have taken to actually build such a structure.

Notre Dame

I'm starting on the West wall. Right now I'm working to the right of the dresser in the previous post's "before" picture.

I start by sketching the building in raw umber. I've got photo reference taped all over the place. Good googly moogly, those Europeans put a wicked amount of detail in their architecture. As I'm starting to really look at the photo reference, I'm thinking this is going to take longer than I had anticipated.

After sketching, I washed a thin glaze of Burnt Umber over the entire building and the sky...varying the amount of glaze here and there and adding some white for clouds in the sky.

Now I can start the fun part...detailing out the architecture.

European Vacation

I've never been to Europe, but Lara has....and she loved it so much, I'm going to paint a European mural in her room. She's picked out her favorite landmarks in London and Paris...The Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, The Arch de Triumph...Big Ben , and Buckingham Palace.

I've spent about four hours just trying to find decent photo reference....and I think I've printed out 35 pictures to work from. The landmarks are going to by hyper detailed, so I needed good, close photos...not that easy to find.

This is a photo of the west wall before starting to paint. The whole mural is going to be painted in sepia tones for an old world look.

Studio Work

"Spring Fever" 6x6" on board

I've been spending some time working in my studio this week. My last mural was hyper detailed, and sometimes I just need to play in the paint and do some abstract works. I varnished this piece with 3 coats of super thick varnish, which gives it a very slick, cool look.

The wall across from the "Throne"

This is the small section of wall directly across from the "throne". This was the final detailed portion of the mural. After this dragon was complete, I put the towel bars back up, removed the tape and cleaned up my mess.

The wall above the "Throne"

This wall takes up space directly above the "throne" in the bathroom. This wall was very difficult to paint as there wasn't enough room for my ladder on either side of the toilet. I ended up standing on the "throne" to paint the walls. I'm short, so reaching all the way to the ceiling was a bit of a stretch.