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Image, Image On The Wall

© Jo Murphy

(If you wish to view the artworks click on the a link once - a pop up window will appear. Each successive image will appear in that window.) Murals may be big and bold or refined and DIGNIFIED. They may be lifesized and realistically illusional. People often ask me how to draw them up and how to make that process accurate. My answer always is

the simplest way is the best.

Different methods achieve different results. Below I have presented a few examples to get you thinking.

There is a vast difference between working with community groups and working on your own individual project. Working with community groups requires a well mapped out plan so that all have an over arching idea to follow. This usually requires some kind of group process, brainstorming and good community facilitation is usually critical to the success of the project. An individual can, because he or she is working alone, afford to improvise as the project is created.

This article is designed to stimulate ideas and present some examples of a variety of ways of approaching mural creation. This should allow you to muse over which one is right for you.

To explore the first method visit Visions of a Millenium Here you will find an explanation of how to put the technique of drawing up from a grid to good use. The project was inspired by Terry Ritchie of Danbury State High. This project involved more than 700 students and 25 teachers and it filled the school's media center to overflowing with dozens of presentations and artifacts depicting 1,000 years of human history. "Three teams discussed and selected a plan for their mural using preliminary scale drawings prepared by each team member. A final scale drawing was made and the teams then went to work using grids to prepare full-size murals. Because the murals were so large, students worked in the hallways in full view of passers-by, and that seemed to spark a spirit of co-operation and involvement that energized the year of hard work."

Michael Cacy discusses his fears about large scale work in an article about "An Interior Mural Project"

Being an illustrator, the prospect of working at mural scale is more than just a little scary to me. "Large," to me, is something like 30" x 40", which is as large as most illustration board comes off the shelf. However, this week I'm putting the finishing touches on the first of two murals that I am creating for an interior retail space in Bermuda--ninety-two square feet of mural to be exact, and that's just the first one, four feet by approximately twenty-three feet. For you artists who paint large exterior murals, this would be a piece of cake, but that's an awfully large illustration for me--not to mention, quite a departure from my usual daily routine.