I love painting murals and doing kids-themed work, so it was a blast to paint this 9’x9’ “Explorer’s map” mural for the Endicott branch of the Dedham Public Library!
To redesign and update both of their branches, the library is working with interior designer Anne Mueller of Briar Design- who has called me in for some of the custom touches! As she was planning the Endicott space, Anne wanted something impactful and whimsical for the kids who frequent the branch - and she thought of a fun, treasure-map themed wallpaper that she was familiar with. To make a bigger impact, though, she wanted the map theme enlarged to fill the entire wall – which is where I came in.
Using the wallpaper as our starting point, Anne and I met to look at the colors she was planning for the space and chose paint colors that would work with the theme of the map while still tying in to the décor of the rest of the space.
With my colors in hand, my first step was to do a scale drawing (in this case, 9”x9”) to make sure my plans were in line with Anne’s vision for the space. Anne was thrilled with the drawing – so it was on to the final wall!
As I looked at the wall, my first challenge was figuring out how to deal with a large air duct that went from floor to ceiling at the right side of the wall I was to paint. Rather than work around this – I decided to incorporate it! The original plan was to fill the wall with the mural, but stead, I decided to make it look like a piece of parchment – and the duct became a scroll that the parchment was wrapping around.
Once I had my plan mapped out, it was on to the drawing and painting – which in this case was even more fun than usual as I had an audience throughout the process!!
Following are pictures of the final product --
Enjoy!
Jason
