When I got the call to look at a potential 350 square-foot forest scene mural for the lobby of a local business, I was intrigued! In the past, I had done work in the home of the owners of Dav Tech, a metal refinishing company in Southboro, MA – so when they embarked on a remodel of their lobby, they reached out to me.
Dav Tech is celebrating their 50th anniversary this year (!), so as part of their celebration they are transforming their lobby to bring the outdoors in! The plan includes building rock walls, growing live grass and building an actual indoor stream. As the backdrop for all of this, they asked me to design a 2-wall mural of a forest scene. Specifically, the scene was to go in a corner sectioned off by the newly-built rock wall that would contain the grassy section and stream. They knew they wanted the scene to include a stream (that would “feed” into the actual stream!), a cabin, and some select animals (wood ducks, doe, and black bear).
With this information in hand, I was on to the design stage! Given the scale of the project, I did a 2-stage design process – starting with a pencil drawing. Below are the drawings I presented – adding in the beaver, squirrel and crow:
Design drawing of wall 1
Design drawing of wall 2
With only a couple of tweaks to my design (they changed the angle of the bear and added the buck), I was on to the concept painting!
For my concept paintings, I do everything to scale with the actual colors I propose for the final mural. Below are the images of these paintings:
Wall 1 concept painting
Wall 2 concept painting
Once I presented these, the only request was to change the crow to an eagle… so I was on to painting the final mural!
When I paint this kind of scene, I start with the most distant elements of the background and work my way forward – ending with the animals as the last step. I included a few in-process photos to give an idea of this process.
beginning of painting process - starting with background
Moving “forward” in the scene as I paint more elements
The last step before adding the animals
The final mural was a hit! I will also need to follow up with more photos when Dav Tech is done with building the stream – and they will be encasing the black column with an actual cedar tree! In the meantime – following are images of the final result.
Enjoy!!
Jason
The final mural!
Closer view of corner and wall 2
Closer view of wall 1 under the stairs landing
And now the animal details!
