By Ray Gatica
Art Deco Murals Make Large Conversational Pieces
A client had contacted me a few years ago wanting to do a mural at her town home near the Post Oak/Galleria area, in Houston TX.
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 and 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 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 a major problem it seemed like a 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 line in the painting have contiguous line and smooth not broken up by the ship lap wall. The room had been an outdoor patio that had been enclosed to be in home an in- home lounge with a bar.
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 what 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 need 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 17 Ft. tall, two women and a male art deco style figures. The figures were high fashion, bejeweled high fashion figures. One of the ladies even has a black widow tattoo, (requested by the client). They were place, juxtaposed a simulated a New York skyline. The client’s objective 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 out wall space.
I had done something similar to this back in early 80’s in Hartford Connecticut in a place Standing Room Only, a Hispanic social club. Based on that experience I knew how to approach this mural.
After the west wall was finished she wanted something done on the opposing east wall. I had not planned for anything on that wall. Again her main objective was to paint the wall instead of the plain white walls. So I came up with an idea based on something I had proposed before, for a bar/lounge in Waterbury, Connecticut. It was pretty simple, and fast but very interesting. It was a impressionistic mountainous scene, 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. At another home I did the same thing on a set of front doors. The client wanted privacy while still letting the sun come through. The art painted on the door was also a couple of art deco style figures. *Seen at right.
We provide free consultations. You can see the projects clicking on the following link: http://www.muralsandbigart.com/Art-Deco-style-Murals%20Samples.htm.
About the Author: 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
muralsandbigart.com
;
GaticaArt.com
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