Painting Art Deco Murals

CC: Island Vista by ryanrocketship

Art Deco Murals Make Large Conversational Pieces

A client contacted me a few years ago, wanting to do a mural at her town home near the Post Oak/Galleria area, in Houston Texas.

She really wasn’t sure what she wanted. She had interviewed a few artists for the project. I had this slick design – sheik figures in an Art Deco style to show her. I personally like art deco and it was a style I had done in the past and enjoyed creating. When I showed her the idea – she liked it and it was a go-ahead.

To best communicate my vision of what I wanted to do, I had the image printed on a transparency sheet and with an overhead projector I projected the image /art on the wall. This helped give the impact of what was to come. This also helped her to see the actual size, which helped in closing the deal.

The figures I proposed were to be around 17 ft. high. The ceiling was 20 ft. high. Although, not major, one problem we had to address and overcome was that the walls were a ship-lap style and the images to be painted had to be a painted in a way that the lines in the painting be contiguous and smooth and not broken up by the ship lap wall. The room had one been an outdoor patio that had been enclosed to be an in-home lounge with a bar. It was nice.

To keep the style consistent with what I had originally created, I hand-painted all the base colors with a brush and then used the airbrush over the images. This gave it the airbrush feel it needed and kept it consistent with the original art I had shown her at the beginning.

The project was started by projecting the images up to size. Then we put application tape on the wall and then the images were outlined and sketched with charcoal pencil. To start painting, I only needed a line sketch to start. In doing this job, I used a technique of cutting friskets (positive templates) and airbrush paintings. A three-tier scaffold was needed due to the 20 ft. ceiling and the size of the figures.

The mural consisted of three figures – two women and a male done in an art deco style. The figures were bejeweled high fashion style. One of the ladies even has a black widow tattoo, (requested by the client). They were placeed, juxtaposed against a simulated a New York skyline. The client’s desire was to cover the white wall space. The mural did that pretty well.

The three images were painted first. Then they were covered and the back ground was painted. The other elements were added as needed to fill in the remaining wall space.

I had done something similar to this back in early 80’s, in Hartford Connecticut, in a place Standing Room Only, that was a Hispanic social club. Based on that experience I knew how to approach this mural.

After the west wall was finished, the client then wanted something done on the opposing east wall. I had not planned for anything on that wall, but after seeing the finished art deco mural, she decided she did not want to leave the remaining white wall plain. So I came up with an idea that was pretty simple, and fast, but I think very interesting. It was a impressionistic mountain scene, with a waterfall and a coyote in the center. The colors used were a golden orange, purple, yellow that bounced off the existing colors found in the room.

All in all – it was an exciting mural project for me and the client loved it.

In painting this wall we also wound up painting the glass patio doors that were on the east wall in front of her bedroom. This served to give her privacy, plus it was painted as part of the overall scene. The whole thing came out quite cool and interesting. This is not the first time we have painted art on glass doors, so I was up to the challenge. The art painted on the door was also a couple of art deco style figures.

We provide free consultations. You can see some of our completed projects by clicking on the following link: http://www.muralsandbigart.com/Art-Deco-style-Murals%20Samples.htm.

The author is a long term artist out of Houston Texas. He specialty is hand painting large murals and big architectural graphics including Gym Graphics, etc. Art Deco is one of his passions. Samples of his art deco style works can be seen at http://www.muralsandbigart.com; http://www.GaticaArt.com.

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