Сolour murals for Detsky Mir headquarters conference rooms.
I have two conference rooms to create murals for: one themed Jumanji, the other - Water world. Designs have to be rather minimalistic and stylish to go with the rest of the interior, fashioned by talented Form Buro
The challenge here is not only to design, but also to paint the murals in a precise and sleek manner so that there are no brush strokes visible whatsoever. Here's what I came up with.
Jumanji conference room
Jumanji the board game board has a distinctive set of trails, that I transforme into a path through jungle. Jungle itself is inspired by Rousseau's paintings of exotic places and ferocious predators. Animalistic figures from the original board, a monkey, a crocodile, an elephant and a rhino, here take shape of their live prototypes: a black rhino, a siamese crocodile, a tufted gray langur and an asian elephant. I handpicked this lot because most of them are endangered (apart from the langur, but these guys stole my significant other's boot back in Sri Lanka, and I kinda wanted to include them, too). I want to raise awareness of these animals existence while we still have a chance to do something. So now every day office workers come to work, they see these animals and they remember them.
Originally I draw using analogue tools like markers, ink and watercolour. I wanted to translate that visual language into first, digital sketches, and then into the murals, by using brush-strokes resembling Copic marker-strokes.
Preview of overall design
Path-building techniques in the making
It's first experience of such scale for me: having two rooms to paint was a challenge time and space-wise. My significant other and inspiring colleague was by my side during all these two weeks of painting.
Efforts of two resulted in these beautiful murals. So, top to bottom we have a black rhino, followed by a siamese crocodile, followed by a tufted gray langur and finally a young asian elephant!
Water world conference room
In the second room we were going for clean, crisp design that resembles a pirate treasure map or a marine-themed board game. It also features a whale, like vintage maps did. Our whale of choice is a jolly decorated humpback whale calf, painted life-size.
Original design; here we have way less details as the room is smaller and I didn't want it to become crammed with wall decoration.
While painting I discovered the best brush for a mural this scale is a make-up brush! It holds just about the right amount of paint, allowing to make soft, bold brush-strokes that look perfect after drying.
Here's overall panorama of the room.
A bit of a whale eye detail. Note the heart-shaped spout, our whale is super-nice!
Those lanes of red and white dots where painted to precision using a sticky stencil and one single brush stroke to fill the shape. Perrrrr-fect no matter if you look from a distance or through a looking glass!
I mean, look at all those dotes!
And here's me after 2 times 24-7, exhausted and happy, next to the last drying layers of paint.
It's 4:00 a.m. and the birds are singing outside the window.
