Drips into fishes

As I was preparing the garage door, a single drop of white primer missed my drop cloth and hit the concrete. I tried to wipe it right up, but I was too late-it had already sunk in. Later I tried to scrub it out. This only made things worse, a small white spot became a large scrubbed out area-with a white spot still in the center.

Lisa suggested I paint over the paint drop with a fish, a fish that had wandered away from the underwater garage door mural. We then thought it would be fun, being great cat lovers, if the fish was a “cat” fish, a fish that looked like a cat (not a real catfish, which are very ugly).

I looked at catfish photos on the web and started sketching. The first image shows my progression of sketches, from top to bottom and left to right. The first sketch looked too much like a real catfish-thin, stiff and definitely not cute. In the sketches that followed the fish got rounder. Shading accentuated the ears, nose and “paws” (fins). The eyes and nose moved forward to give the feeling that you are looking down on them. The stiff body developed an “S” curve that really gave a feeling of motion through water.

I had a few more drips by the time I was done. We decided to honor some of our favorite cats, present and past. I developed the following sketches for a tuxedo cat fish, an orange and white Maine Coon cat fish and an all black cat fish.

Next article: cats on the concrete

 

 

Finished!

Not much more to say, so let’s get right to it.

First photo: Scuba diver, orange and purple coral

Second: Fish and coral

Third: Kelp and red fish

Fourth and Fifth: Close-ups of the sponge painted textures, blends, layering and drips.

Sixth: View from our back door, the door everyone uses to enter our home

Seventh: View from the side, at our gate

Eight-Tenth: Sequence as you walk away from the door, starting at a view of the entire mural

We are very happy with how the mural turned out. I must admit I was terrified when I started this project, having no idea how to do it, but I wound up having a ball.

The photographs don’t really do the mural the justice. The colors are even brighter in person, and the large mural has lots of impact when you stand next to it. Guess you’ll have to come over and see it yourself-just call first.

Next article: Paint drips turned into “cat” fish-the painting saga continues

 

 

Developing a technique

Once I had created the mural image, I realized I had no idea how to paint it. We knew we wanted the mural to look ripply, like it was being seen through water. We thought that using large brushstrokes would do this, and we liked the idea of an image that makes sense at a distance but breaks up into pieces of color up close. So my first step was to transform the image into brush strokes. I used Photoshop to give a feel for what the mural might look like (top image).

Our garden is too dense to transfer the image to the door using a projector-too many plants in the way. I decided to use a grid. Our garage door is made from wood boards, with horizontal grooves between the boards. I put a grid onto the rippled image, using the grooves for the horizontals and lines 1′ apart for the verticals. I marked the verticals with chalk on the ground, and had a grid to rough out the images (second image).

I then used 24″ wide brown kraft paper to try out different techniques. The large paper allowed me to practice full-size, important for doing such a large mural. I started with smaller pencil sketches to get a feel for shapes, curves and colors. Since the paper is brown, I used a white pencil for the highlights, and a dark blue pencil for dark areas (third image).

We next selected paint, picking the strongest colors. I tried to keep the number of colors down, knowing I would be doing lots of blending. We finally settled on 11 colors.

I decided to tackle the blue water at the top first, starting with the white of the sun through the water and blending out to the dark blue at the sides. The dark blue matched the garage wall color. It seemed natural to try a sponge for this large, simple blending (fourth image). I liked working with the sponge so much, that I decided to use it for the entire mural.

Image Descriptions

First: Rippled image

Second: Rippled image with grid

Third: Pencil sketch on kraft paper

Fourth: Water blending sample

Fifth: Kelp sample

Sixth: Purple coral

Seventh: Sponging the mural with paint cans, blended colors in yogurt containers, and the rippled, gridded image in the background

Eighth: Red/black fish

Ninth: Yellow fish

Tenth: Orange coral

Eleventh:  “Artist” signature

Next article: the mural unveiled