"Awakenings," My First Overseas Mural
I’ve always dreamt of traveling and doing art at the same time. In July 2016, I came across the opportunity to create not one but three art pieces in one of the most fantastic and mysterious countries in the world, Turkey, for one of the most amazing properties I've ever experienced, Manici Kasri.
During my time there, I was introduced to realistic murals, emotional and visionary door art. Now I’m hooked.
Ever since I've been back in the US, I've been itching to continue working at the door scale. There’s something awe-inspiring about a large canvas that also serve a crucial function.
The opportunities to explore this type of art to embellish all kinds of openings seem endless. I’m curious to see which doors comes next…?
It was such a seminal event that I thought I’d show a few pictures of how the first door was created. I called it "Awakenings." Subconsciously, the name acknowledged that this particular door opened a whole new world of uncharted territories.
In retrospect, this event herald the first of a series of dominoes that toppled and fell squarely into place with every move forward on this journey of creativity, artistry and watercolor illustrator extraordinaire.
At last, this round peg found its round hole.
Working on that first door project provided me with a clarity of purpose I've never felt before... in my entire life.
And so, here's how that first door came came to be...
The RESEARCH
First, I put together a design questionnaire inspired from my permaculture classes from nearly a decade ago. I then peppered my client, then also my work-trade host, with a ton of questions. In hindsight, I can appreciate how I was probably being overly cautious and overcompensating for, what I perceived to be at the time, a dreadful lack of experience.
Predictably, regardless of my own insecurities and ideas, all the design frameworks learned from two permaculture certifications, plus my background in architecture, landscape design, garden design, human-centered design plus years painting and drawing, installing murals off and on, faux-finishing my own condo and random crafting sprints... they all came to the rescue.
I reconnected old neuro pathways and it seems to take just a couple of hours. By the end of the day, I put together the outline of a feasible plan to bring order out of chaos, prepare for the worst/ best case scenarios, clarify expectations and ideal outcomes for creating a mural in a foreign country.
I'm very big on order. In fact, I thrive in structured spaces of my own design. This is what my design process looks like when I'm not stressed out of my mind and paralyzed by anxiety because I have no idea what I'm doing. Somehow, I just figured it out.
INSPIRATION
My main source of inspiration were the sunflowers incongruously growing in a backyard. Then came the sky blue wooden window shutters, the geometric curves and the beautiful arabesques shapes one encounters at every turn in Turkey.
Side note: I also downloaded, watched and studied, a ton of flower painting tutorials from Pinterest and Youtube university to learn one stroke acrylic floral painting. That was some serious hands-on, fly-by-the seat of your pants, your left-brain design artsy girl had to do. It helped a lot.
The COLOR STUDIES & PROTOTYPE
It was intense in the beginning. It took me at least four different color studies to be satisfied. In the end, I picked one and ran with it. However, I still wanted to do more...MORE!
A STEP-BY-STEP MURAL INSTALL
I was the lead artist on this project and so from gathering/collecting/ordering the material to actual installation, I had to take care of it all. That was only the third project of its kinds I was doing. In reality, I wouldn’t have been able to cover all of my bases if it wasn’t for a wonderful local Turkish artist, Arzu whom I met and sort of took me under her wing.
MURAL INSTALLATION
Step 1. Checked the study color scheme against the door and the environment, for all the good that will do (!?)
FINISHED PIECE
Et Voila! The first project in a series of door murals and garden murals at the hotel, took about 100 hours to produce from beginning to end. Along the way, I edited and changes a few things to accomodate new inputs and Mr Murphy.
At the time, I was certain the mural took way too long to finish. I did try half-heartedly to speed through it, even though I had no time limit but by golly I was also on vacation! I ended up just taking my time because I enjoyed the work so much and was still able to explore the area.
Came to find out, years later after working with an amazing professional lead mural artist from Minneapolis, that finishing three doors, plus a long garden mural, in less than three months, was pretty impressive. It should have taken me much longer!
Bright Insight: Door art are more like canvas paintings than murals. Murals can be quite open-ended and cover expansive or small areas. They aren't necessarily framed. Door art on the other hand, have built-in frames -just like a framed painting!
Standing at the top of a stone staircase for a bird's eye view of the finished door of the conference room at Manici KasriClient source: workaway.info LOCATION: Kucukkuyu, Turkey CLIENT: Manici Kasri boutique Hotel PROJECT HOURS: about 100+ hours including research & materials inventory.
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Public Announcement: This blog post is part of a collection of 354+ posts from my original Wordpress blog "Dreaming Into Being." I've now retired and migrated it to “Wander & Paint,” my new blog post at the United Wanderlust art shop. As time allows, I will be reviewing, condensing, updating and releasing the best of the posts. This may take a long time but they will be available again little by little to serve as visual documentation of an artist's journey.
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