The mural here was painted in my studio on canvas in two halves. Creating a mural like this uses the marouflage technique. From the initial concept of the project I knew it would have to be painted this way. The labour needed to paint a mural of this quality was not practical to be completed upside down on the ceiling. With the canvases stretched across two frames in my studio I was able to paint with the figures predominantly ‘right way up’ . Figurative painting is almost impossible upside down as I remembered from my days attempting this as a street artist.
How To Creating A Marouflage Technique Mural
I worked out a ‘cut’ across the design that would be following natural lines across the design on the canvas. The mural itself would need to be very accurately painted for the two halves to be married together like a jigsaw. The architectural nature of balustrade meant that inaccuracies would be easily spotted. I took high quality digital photographs of the mural during the painting process and took care to assemble both halves digitally so that by the time it came to installation, I knew that it would fit seamlessly.
Making the final measurements before the two halves are cut to size. I’m remembering the old adage – ‘measure twice, cut once’!
It took three of us a couple of hours on each half to get the marouflage technique mural on the ceiling. The main problem was the intolerable heat of the Sri Lankan summer and the abundance of mosquitoes. The mural itself went up like a dream. We added a sealing coat the ceiling surface first and then used extra heavy duty adhesive to fix the mural in place.
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- Detail of the completed mural showing where the final joins were
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- Making the final ‘french cut’
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- Cutting the canvas to size
The final joining edges of the mural were spliced together using a ‘french cut’ method. The join was undetectable, even when scrutinising it at close quarters.
Read the Times article – forget minimalist – try a mural.
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