The Integration of Technology and Painting Murals: The Investigation of Assisting the Mural Artists

Berglund Authority Level 4

by Jan Shield
<shieldj@pacificu.edu>

Professor of Art and Muralist / Chairman, Art Department, Pacific University

Working Collaborativley with Photo Realist Artist & Mural Painter Daniel Galvez

Abstract


Jan Shield and Daniel Galzvez received a grant from the GSA (Governmental Services Administration) to create two 9' x 20' murals titled "Guardians of the Past - Stewards of the Future"on the entry hall of the Department of Interior in Washington, D.C., November, 2000. In order to do this, they first created the models for the murals with a variety of photos from National Geographic. They then created black and white renderings of the model by hand. These black and white models were sent to BDI-USA to make the large-scale high-resolution 9' X 20' prints that were to be painted on. The original black and whites were also scanned into a computer and digitally colored. This digital color model was used in conjunction with the original model made from National Geographic photos to paint the 9' x 20' prints by hand to complete the murals.

Above: The original black and white model used for the large-scale high-resolution print.

Go ahead and lay out a palette, the oil colors are right here. Put your blues, greens, and ochre out there and use the liquin as your medium. Just mix a little liquin into your colors as your create the tones. I want you to follow the values to get lots of variation as you work over the painting surface. Here, you take this photo and this scan. I want you to work up this area, just start in one section and keep moving. Keep all of the references related to the image points as you work.

No, wait, you better use this other scan to work from, you are getting the colors too large and you need to look more at the master. See, look back and forth between the black and white painted marquette and the photos and bring up the purples in the shadows. Look here in the other mural, see. Later on I will add more values with overlay glazes. You don't want to try and get that like it is done in the first painting layer. You are just blocking out the references now. We need to get the contrast references in without loosing all the values. Wait, here let's look for it. Here is another photo of the ocean in black and white. Use all four images as you continue to develop. Don't leave this out, this kind of modeling here is what I want throughout both the paintings. This area looks good. You need to get these values on the other side to work as well. You have some artistic freedom, but I want all the information there.

Shield, what kind of music is that? We keep one CD playing after another. It is truly fascinating how life itself is such a fusion and we are playing out part in it all. Not only the songs and the music give ideas and emotional connections, but also the titles make one think of paintings not yet created from voice and sound to visual pictures invented by the mind. Making art is not just making art.

Above: Shield painting one of the 9' x 20' murals.

It allows the maker to explore the realms of inner consciousness and thought without limits. It's interesting to me that here we are, listening to all these music performances from Ireland to Africa, and Peru to Spain and back to the United States, while Daniel is wanting me to paint the world into this mural.

What I say to students in the schools when I give a talk on making a mural is that there are four big things to think about. I call them the four big C's: Content, Color, Composition, and Craft. Using technology is key to the process as we move into the twenty-first century..

The mural itself is all about what the Department of Interior is doing. They have hundreds of people working in that building in Washington D.C., where this mural is going to be. Others in the field are working on everything from the water to the land, and the air to the sea. These environmental concerns like water testing and clean up are key items in the mural. One has to synthesize and compose this statement into the mural.

The images we took from my two painted marquettes in black and white oil were on four by five photos so we could do the computer work from them. We changed from just value studies in black and white in the land proposal and did it in sepia tones after scanning the black and white photos. The one that focuses on water, life, and air to land, we did as a duotone. So when color is added you get this great richness from the values underneath, ranging from purple to black. It makes it cooler and the sepia-based mural one will be warmer.

The company I was going to have put the image from my digital images on disk to the canvas couldn't get the canvas. They wanted me to get it, so I found a company in Sparks, Nevada called BDI-USA. It is a commercial industry that does big scale advertising on woven skim, to cloth and canvas. They could do my digital works right on twelve-foot No. 10 or 12 double primed gessoed canvas for $8 a square foot. That is about $1300 a piece for 12' by 20'. They shipped it to me three days later, one in a big long box, which was OK, and one in a heavy shipping tube which will be great for re-shipping the mural to D.C. I don't know where they got this type of canvas.

I will leave those photos out for you. The amount I had to pay for the use of that photo was a lot. I had to pay the photographer $1,000 for the copyright release through National Geographic Magazine to use that image in my mural and the cost to use other photographs ranged form $250 to $1,000 each.

Daniel is really pumping up the color as he works on one of the Indians on the other central panel. The centrality of the grouping is like a huge axial energy force as for their meaning to the total statement of the mural. The intermixture and intensity of how he is working the color adds transparency over the sepia tone output. This process of working over such a value study moves energy to the statement and really brings your eye right to the center of the image.

We are learning not only more about what and how we are working, we have the chance to discuss, to collaboratively produce, and to allow ourselves the freedom to let our minds wander into realms of personal concerns, discuss social issues, political events. teaching methods, neighbor relations, medical conditions, artistic concepts, technical problems, real estate, and just about anything. It is a very refreshing way of being. Along with the many challenges that present themselves in the overall scheme of working, collaboration as a process of creation has numerous benefits related to learning. Trying to remain open minded to new experiences, I must look at it as a combination of creative forces, technological applications, and cultures.

Above: Galvez painting one of the 9' x 20' murals.

Here, put the photo on a piece of cardboard Shield. It makes it a lot easier to hold onto. Now, get right up to the image when you work. Yesterday, when you were painting you were reaching too far up. You need to get straight onto the subject when you are working from a photo, as you loose too much contact with the values. Let's get the palette right next to you on the table too. I you work up higher, use a stool. Having the palette closer, you don't have to loose track of where you were.

You know, in painting murals, I am always thinking about function. To me, function has to do with the kind of impact my murals have on the people in the surrounding area. They also have a function as how they work and where they are. The idea of communicating something significant is important, and in the process relating to people's daily lives has effects on them.

Look at how I do it. I put my thumb directly next to the point on the photo and work up the values in the sweaters. See where it is off here? This angle needs to be over here a little further, and if you get that done, go on and do this shirt on the man here.

We snap off twenty or so digital photos of the development on both mural sections to keep a record of the progress of the project and call it a day.

Above: The Digitally Colored Models along with National Geographic Photos used as models.