The most technical and challenging wall I've painted! | Anatomy of an Artwork Ep 5

Welcome to this week's Anatomy of an Artwork. My name's Fieldy, I'm a professional muralist and surf and street artist. So in this episode I'm going to be walking you through the process of creating this mural. It's called Homecoming and it is definitely the longest, hardest project that I have ever done. This project's an absolute ripper so stay tuned to hear more about it after this quick announcement. Are you ready to take your art career to the next level? If you are, come check out Fieldy's Art Academy All Access Membership. It's for artists just like you who are wanting to turn their art hobby into a thriving, profitable art career. It's only $49 a month and when you sign up you're going to get access to all of my exclusive online art courses plus monthly group coaching sessions with me where you can ask questions, update your progress and even receive art critiques in a supportive, friendly environment. Check out the link above to sign up today. I can't wait to see you there. Welcome back. So this project, this monster wall is 40 meters long, it's curved and it has an unusual concertina-like build. There also had to be a high level of community engagement with this project. There had been a group of 11 young people who'd been pre-selected to be part of this project and they'd already come up with a bunch of ideas that they wanted on the wall. So our first job was to run a workshop with these young people and really get to the bottom of what they wanted to have on this wall. So I did one workshop session with them and we came up with a whole bunch of ideas and it was my job to take those ideas and weave them all together into one cohesive concept which is actually, as you might imagine, really quite difficult to do. So the concept I designed is called Homecoming and it's actually about the commuter journey. So the commuters are mainly going to be working in the city, which is on the left-hand side of the concept, and they're represented by these kind of geometric city animals. And then the wall journey represents their train trip home back into the hills where the station is at night. So the hills is bush, there's lots of jacaranda flowers, it's very natural. So the wall sort of morphs from being very geometric and city-fied into a realistic more stylized, I guess, natural element on the other side of the wall. One of the first setbacks that we had to this project was that it rained three weeks solid before we could even start work on the wall because we had to wait for the contractors to prime it and paint it. It's still a construction zone at this time, so we all have to wear full protective clothing, so that's hard hats, vests, boots. And the other thing is, at this time I'm also six months pregnant, so boy, it was all quite challenging. But the first step in this project was to grid each panel. So in total there was about 15 panels. Each of these panels had to be gridded individually, so I created a template using a cardboard block with the correct width and height of each of my grid squares, so that we could really really quickly just put it on the wall and make marks. And then mention our helper Laura used a chalk string line to very quickly create the grid lines for us to follow. If you want to know how to grid a mural, and there's a whole bunch of different ways, then I have an entire mini module about that, so check up in the corner if you want to know my method for doing this really easily. So after the grid lines are in, then basically I am sketching up the design. So that's exactly what I'm doing here. I'm using some chalk and some pencil and drawing up the realistic elements. To do the geometric designs, I actually used rulers to get the nice straight lines. So I decided to start with the geometric side of the wall, so starting from the left-hand side and working our way across. Initially I wasn't really sure how we're going to do this, because I don't generally do geometric things. So I had a go doing it freehand, and I wasn't happy with the crispness of the lines. So I went out got myself some really expensive, really good tape, and we created a system for creating these geometric animals. And if you're wondering what those numbers are in the in the background there, that's because for this mural we had to actually have helpers on board to help paint it. So that's the initial young people that we did the workshop with. So they came in and they did a painting day where they filled in all those areas. So that was heaps of fun, and it was so cool to see the mural suddenly just come to life. On the other end of the wall, so this is the right-hand side, I had to create all the realistic looking animals. So that's what I'm doing here. I'm painting a pair of endangered black cockatoos. Basically what I'm doing here is my normal painting process. So I'm layering the paint, but I had to use quite a big brush, and because the wall was such a heavy sort of cinderblock texture, I had to basically just not put too much detail into it. So really up close, there's not a huge amount of detail, but when you step back to viewing distance, it all comes together. It looks really cool. Another one of the quirks of this project that I had to try and figure out was how does the animal cross the two panels. So you can see this big kangaroo here, it's crossing over two panels, and there's actually like a width difference because the panels overlap each other. So I hadn't accounted for that in the concept, because when I was designing the concept it was flat, and I'm like yeah this is gonna look amazing. But when I got to the wall, I'm like oh okay, I have to figure this out. And the additional challenge was is that to get the two halves of the animal to match up, it really depends on where you're standing and how tall you are. So to solve this problem, I had basically had to wing it and do it by eye. And as it turns out, I am happily the exact average height for human beings in general. So I basically just stood back to the edge of the garden where you're likely to be viewing it from, and then I matched up the two halves of the animal myself by eye. So after I'd done my realistic animals, and we'd done the workshop, so all of the base colors are in the realistic animals, and the geometric side's completely done, the last thing I have to do is just pull it all together and do the final finishing touches. So this is me moving along the wall, I'm adding some outlines, just filling in spots which I felt needed a little bit of extra attention, or it needed some more color and some more life added. So in a nutshell, that is my painting process. If you want to learn how to paint murals like I do, right from the very beginning until the end, including everything you need to know to be able to paint a mural with confidence, then definitely go to my online academy and check out my Ultimate Mural Painting Guide. That literally has everything you ever needed to know about painting murals. Thank you so much for watching, I hope you enjoyed watching this. If you have any questions or comments, please leave them below. Otherwise, thanks again, please subscribe and share!