Sunday, March 18, 2007

My Love Letters

Spring is only hours away, but in my case it's only steps away. All I have to do is go to my mother's bathroom. In my Feb 2007 post, where you can see me hard at work, my project at the time was a mural that was based on Jean Honore Fragonard's beautiful work. Because I was doing two walls, I chose two of his paintings to work from, "Love Letters" and "The Swing".

I wanted this mural to look and be fantastic, so I did a lot of research. A lot of research. One of the techniques I read about was using an overhead projector. Where could I get that piece of equipment? Two words: Ebay, baby! I was so excited when my package arrived that I got started right away. Step 1: measure the wall. Step 2: print the desired (and scaled) image on transparency paper. Step 3: chalk an outline of the image that's projected. Simple!

The projector made the work go easier and so much faster. Only the top half of my mom's bathroom has a scene. The bottom half that you see is the "garden wall" complete with cracks. This particular mural even has an special feature--a trompe l'oeil (trick the eye) effect. Visit my website's mural section to see it and more.