Meaning in Painting

The article I wrote for my SBP

A ‘Murvalous’ way to make it happen 

Ways to make art from members of the mural organization; Synonym Art Consultation and techniques 

Shyra Lantican

You know, art is confusing, it’s tough. If you’re not already exactly sure what you want to do and how you want to start it, especially when it comes to making a mural or any sort of large scale painting; that could leave you pretty stuck and unsure of what to do next. 

That is what happened to me as a painter, but I have educated myself by researching and speaking with different artists and mentors I could connect with. And before any other processes and advice you should take, my own suggestion would be to listen to other people’s perspectives and how they take on how to get started on things like murals! You will be able to learn a lot through another artist's eyes, and walk through this whole process with me as two artists that are still learning from each other and other professional artists. 

Synonym Art Consultation is a great organization with plenty of muralists and artists. I have interviewed Joseph Pilapil from The Traveling Sign Painters and Chloe Chafe; the creative director and co-founder of Synonym Art Consultation. So now I will share with you what I’ve learned from them as you basically look through my eyes and take in what I took in from them! 

The first thing you’ll have to do before you even start painting is lay out ideas on what you want to paint of course! Out of all the things that was difficult about making a painting for me, was having ideas on what to paint. Chloe Chafe had said when she was the one making the art before being the creative director at Synonym, that she would use collaging as a way to paint a picture in her mind. Using different pictures and playing around with layering with paper filled patterns and textures; it was a great way to just put things together without having to sketch anything. 

Of course, even after collaging you can sketch out whatever you made that you see and use that drawing for a painting you will do. Another thing that could help you if collaging isn’t your thing is drawing from what you see in your dreams. Maybe it could even end up being an artstyle for you!

Amazing! So, now that you know what you’re going to paint, you can now work on building up to a mural. When building up to a mural, Joseph Pilapil suggests starting off with smaller paintings and slowly moving yourself up to bigger canvases. And when you’re ready, you can even start off by painting a wall in your room or somewhere around your house. 

Though what if it ends up not looking the way you intended it to when you had it painted on a smaller canvas? Let’s say you didn’t put the centerpiece in a place where it looks as if it is the most important part of the painting, or you added too much blank space. 

To make this easier on yourself, you will have to understand the design principles in painting on a larger surface. 

Emphasis: Let’s go back to that specific piece you wanted to make, you want that important part in that art piece to really show right? Think about it, if you want it to be the most important thing then you have to put it as the most noticeable that your audience will see it first. It could be that it’s the most unique looking versus the rest of the painting, for example a really cartoony character with a realistic background. Or maybe it could even be the brightest part of the piece.

White Space: White space is the amount of blank space to your art piece. Contrasting with emphasis, blank space is the amount of empty area that you are wanting to put. 

Unity: Sameness and patterns. Unity is where there are things that are the same. For example there are a bunch of dots around your background, and the are not all the same colour; but though they might not be the same colour, they might have the same sizes, and there is that unity. 

Movement: The way you tell a story to your viewers. Movement ties into everything here, where will their eyes lead? Which direction do you want them to read it by? How do you want them to read your painting?

Great! So now that you understand the basic design principles, you can now use different techniques to get the smaller art piece onto a wall. When you want to layout a smaller painting or sketch on a bigger surface, a few techniques are to use a projector, grid method, or even just going for it. Let me break it down for you!

Projector: Using a projector onto the wall of your sketch, drawing, or smaller painting, using a photo of it, and then to trace the image of it on the wall.

Grid Method: Drawing a light grid pattern onto your drawing or painting and then scaling that grid to a bigger size on the wall. Each square will have lines coming in and out of it, you just have to replicate each and every individual line.

By using these techniques and methods I have shown, you will be able to paint on larger surfaces in no time, but the most important action to do is practice. You will hear this a lot, but it really does just take practice to do these kinds of things. 

And like Chloe Chafe happily stated; 

“Choose a piece you’ll enjoy making and actually have fun in doing!”