28 Dec Highly detailed Trompe L’oeil ceiling mural
Over the timespan of having a career as a mural and trompe l’oeil artist it has always been unpredictable as the fashions and economic climate fluctuates. During the three big economic recessions in the last thirty years I was actually painting more murals and was busier with commissions than so called boom times. It is easy to speculate that a wealthy person’s idea of economising is to commission a trompe l’oeil mural or a chinoiserie feature wall in an existing property rather than buy a new house in another country.
Latterly with many countries feeling the economic effects after a worldwide virus and unnecessary wars and rising prices I surprisingly still find myself bucking the trend and still busy with mural commissions.
Having had a long career the range of commissions from simple faux finishes to the most complex of trompe l’oeil and international influences of chinoiserie or english garden murals, and everything in between.
My present commissions are demonstrative of this mixture whilst finishing the last two murals of an eight mural commission which I have discussed in a previous blog which whilst all having the common theme of country scenes. All eight murals are painted on canvas and are for a garden room, each wall has a different ambience one Roman influenced ruins another English gardens with fountains, whilst using one theme I have snuck in many influences pickpocketing my favourites from all cultures.
Contrasting with the eclectic country murals and being painted in the studio concurrently is one of the more complex trompe l’oeil ceiling murals. The two mural commissions could not be more contrasting and are only similar in that they are both being painted on canvas in the studio on canvas.
This most recent commission relies on being precise as the trompe l’oeil design has to fit into a designated area and just to get the drawing correct took me 40 hours and was precise enough for me to blow up and use as a template for the actual painting of the mural.
This trompe l’oeil design is intended for a small dining room ceiling. I had originally thought about painting it directly onto the ceiling in situ but it would have involved building a platform and rendering the room out of use for a month, as well as the physical challenges of working at those angles.
My clients are not based in the UK and had searched on google for the best trompe l’oeil artist in the UK and luckily found me and so all the communication has been on the internet with me doing several site visits to the flat in London to get precise measurements. The canvas as the design runs right up to the edges has to be accurate down to the centimetre.
Having finished this complicated design the canvas was transported to the site with the help of an expert wallpaper hanger we pasted the mural on canvas onto the ceiling. The small gaps in meeting places to the ceiling edge was touched in and we continued the painting of the mural design onto the wall in situ to complete the theme. The trompe l’oeil mural on the ceiling and walls changed this small Notting Hill dining room into an absolute jewel
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