Mural Illustration - Exam project
- Jochem de Groot
For this assignment we had to make a mural for an out door art gallery in the Netherlands. We get to choose from three different buildings and the mural had to fit the purpose of the building.
Research.
I already knew a few things about murals but I wanted to learn a little more so I did some research. Murals are artworks applied to walls of permanent structures, usually in public spaces. some examples are the murals in berlin and the murals by Banksy. What I noticed when looking up pictures of murals was that the art is decided by the building and the art has to adapt to it. the shape of the building and the artist have to work together and since the task was to make the mural fit the purpose of the building that takes in effect aswell.
Source: Pinterest
In the video game: Forza Horizon 5 (a racing game) the open world is filled with murals by the artist Farid Rueda who references Mexican culture in all his works.
Source: Pinterest
BlindWalls Gallery is an outdoor museum of murals all around Breda telling the story of the city. In the 1600s Breda was surounded by a large wall to protect the city. To honor those wall BlindWalls Gallery wants to put the walls of Breda in the spotlight.
The firts step was to choose one of the three buildings.
The first building was a Bar and kitchen.
I liked this building because of the weird shape and the restaurant seemed interesting.
It is a restaurant where they serve diverse dishes and exotic drinks. the building is located at the former place of the wall that protected Breda.
The second building was a jazz bar but is now a sushi restaurant.
I liked the options with this building but i really hated the shape.
Building 3 was the government building in Tilburg.
Basically everything that you have to do with the government happens here. getting a new ID or drivers license. I chose to do this building because the shape is forgiving and I myself am from Tilburg so I really connected with it.
I had the idea of making a skyline of Tilburg with some of the iconic buildings and have the sky be made out of multiple toony icons to get the street vibe of the city.
Sketch.
1.
So my first idea was to make the skyline with grafitti art above it. I started with choosing buildings to put in the skyline so i searched some important/iconic buildings in tilburg. I made a list out of those buildings:
- de saint joseph church
- centraal station
- westpoint residence
- interpolis
- spoor park toren
- stadsheer residence
- tilburg fair
- nature museum
Eventually iwant something like this.
So I started making sketches of these buildings.
I added some doodle like graffiti art behind the buildings and my idea is to have these all over the rest of the building to represent Tilburg's street life.
2.
My second idea was to instead of making a skyline to make the iconic buildings of tilburg in a street art style. I really liked the style and was suprised by how it worked out.
The style kind of reminded me of Mr Doodle who is an artist who draws entire rooms in small little artworks what together make one work and they all connect together.
3.
For my third concept I wanted to do something with carnaval. So I made a scarf in the colors of Tilburg during carnaval. I made a colorfull background to further give the feeling of a holyday.
I didn't really like this concept because it had no further dept exept for a local holyday.
I had a talk with the customer and he liked my second idea the most wich i agreed with. The cartoony street style mixed with multiple iconic buildings together make Tilburg and represent the city in one piece.
Final Product.
I got a Stencil from a classmate of the shape of the building, showing off all the windows so i can shape the illustration to the building.
I added my sketch to see how it would fit and the first thing i noticed was that the title wouldnt fit strechted over the full width
I liked the look of the central station in my sketch so i redrew it for y final work and make it fit to the building.
I had a lot of trouble with drawing the roof of the station because on most images it looked mostly grey. But when i drew it grey it jut didn't look right, so i tried adding the white support beams but that looked to bright for the roof. Eventually i chose to make the roof white and added shadows to add some contrast and I really liked the look.
I added some window glare and it really made the whole thing look alive and finished
Next i made the Interpolis building which doesn't have alot of features unless i want to fill up the entire canvas with the second half. the plan is to use the top of the tower to fill up the top and have other buildings stand in front of it.
I changed the composition by making the church larger because it felt a little insignificant and by making it bigger it would wrap round the empty corner of the building. Because of that a lot of the train station would be kind of clouded so i chose to add a white border around the station kond of like a sticker.
I wanted a smaller building in the front so I used the Nature museum andit turned out pretty well.
To fill up the empty corner i used the Tilburg fair wheel and because it has a lot of thin beams I experimented with having it be a cutout just like the station but eventually it just looked bad and I left that idea completely.
Instead I added fireworks in the back to make the mural more colorfull and festive and also to give the fair idea.
I was happy with the amount of things going on and how the whole wall was filled. I started looking at the the title and where i wanted to have it. I found a selection of fonts i liked and fitted with the style of the mural.
All these fonts have a cartoony style and have the thickness of the lines I used.
After using all fonts I chose to use the 3rd because its not to overly cartoony to the point where you can't read it but it's also not to curvy like the 2nd.
So I started looking at the best position. the bottom was already filled with the museum which is bright and the church which has a lot of detail so it didn't really fit well. I liked the middle because the space felt a bit open but I went with the top because there was nothing there yet and it just looked right to me.
And so this is my final work.
Lastly I put it on the building in photoshop.
