A new ceiling mural, commissioned by clients near me.

01 Apr A new ceiling mural, commissioned by clients near me.

When Google really pays off for a muralist is when someone googles mural artist near me, not

only because it means more work but it is in the same locality and cuts out those hours spent

driving or in packed carriages at rush hour on the metro.

Recently I got a mural enquiry to paint an atrium which is a domed ceiling in Putney London a

couple of miles from my house in South London, a lovely area with a village feel near the river

Thames.

Atrium scaled drawing for the mural.

I made a house visit to view the location and the atrium with a few ideas to start a dialogue

investigating all the possible visual scenarios, they suggested something with foliage.

The atrium is over 30 meters up and can be viewed from the hall all the way up passing 2 floors

to the third floor, looking up from the hall it would look splendid to have a central artwork which

could be seen from below adding drama and personality to the space.

By coincidence I had been working on a mural in the studio on canvas which is of a lush fantasy

jungle scene with animals in the style of Henri Rousseau (discussed in other blogs) this gave

me some confidence to suggest an ambitious mural with the fading backdrop of mountains and

rich foliage in the foreground.

I have discussed in other blogs the difficulty of painting murals on domed ceilings but this was

made simpler by not being restricted with having a repetitive pattern and using sky and

mountains to gain more perspective and depth whilst having the detailed work covering the

edges of the circumference.The dome is 3.30 wide which means the circumference is over 11

meters which is a large area to cover.

Once we had agreed on basic ideas I collected some reference material and the clients visited

my studio and inspected my work in progress, the jungle mural, and they looked at the

reference material and they liked the same images I was inspired by and added some of their

own ideas.

The next part is to create a scaled drawing indicating the reference material and at which part of

the mural it was going to help understand the scale and to arrange dates and book in scaffolding

to get safe access to paint the mural.

I will cover the actual work and results in a future blog.