mural blog

An Enchanted Dining Room

One of the more interesting residential projects we've completed in the past few years was this dining room for a townhouse on the upper West side of Manhattan, just off the Hudson River.  The townhouse was being completely renovated by the owners, and they brought us on board to create a landscape mural for the dining room. 

Conceptually, the owner's idea for the space was to create a landscape mural in the room that would bring some of the magic and mystery of the forest into the experience of the room.  At night, lit by fireplace and candles, one might be able to imagine that one has set up dinner in the clearing of a verdant landscape.  During the day, the landscape would bring a sense of life and space and color to the room.

The architecture of the room was established when we started on the project.  The walls smoothly curved up into the ceiling with no break and there were some existing columns at the the doors to the adjacent parlor.  The dining room is on the third floor of the townhouse, and a curving staircase with a beautiful wrought iron railing transitions through the space on the east side of the room.

An early concept for the room was to base the landscape on the paintings of the Hudson River School, a style of painting notable for it's luminous light and drama.  The image above was an early sample, but it was fast apparent that the approach wasn't going to work for this room.  The images were often too dramatic, and when doing landscape murals in a residential setting like this, you want the mural to be a secondary character, not the focus of attention.  You want to enjoy the beauty the artwork brings to a room and have guests enjoy it, but the mural's role should be clearly subservient - it sets a tone of beauty and elegance and than fades to the background.  Given this, we knew we needed to try a new approach. (Click thumbnails for enlarged photos)

We did continue to use some Hudson River Valley scenes as a compositional foundation, but ultimately we went with a much lighter 'spring' look, and eliminated some of the more overly dramatic elements we had at first considered. The picture on the left showed an early sample of this new approach.  In addition to changing the palette significantly, we also used an 'alla prima' technique, where colors are applied directly to the substrate, skipping the traditional 'underpainting' technique we usually use to  get the drawing and structure of a mural into place.

The switch in palette and technique brought a great sense of lightness and space to the mural, but their was still something missing.

Studying some of Gustav Klimpt's landscapes, our lead artist was inspired to add some metallic pigment powders into the paints - golds, silvers, and coppers - and it was these subtle metallic effects that really brought the mural into the finished state. You don't notice the metallics in the room at a quick viewing of it, but when lit by the flickering flames of a candle, the metallics catch the light and make it sparkle in a very subtle way as you move around the room.

In addition to painting the mural on the walls, we also did a sky that also incorporated subtle warm golden glazes.

This project was a lot of work, and took a lot of time, but the end result was quite stunning - a project that both our clients and us are proud of!

Following are a few "before and after photos" so you can see more of the room as it was transformed by our enchanted forest scene.

 

A Sense of Space

We recently completed this mural along a narrow hallway on the second floor of a house.  It's an original design roughly based on some of Hudson River School artists, but with a muted palette to harmonize better with some of the surrounding finishes in the space.  One of the reasons a mural like this is nice is that the sense of distance and space you see in the mural helps to make the hallway seem much more expansive, as well as bringing a calming, peaceful presence to the space.

Calm Waters

 

Up here in New York, we plan to end our summer with one last weekend at a beach like the one we painted in the mural above.  But it's hard to look at such a lovely calm image today, as the destructive scope of Hurricane Katrina becomes more and more clear.

As a company, we'll be contributing to the Red Cross, and one of our artists has organized a benefit for artists and musicians in New Orleans.

In the meantime, here are some links if you are looking, as we are, for ways to help in this time of great need for New Orleans and the surrounding areas:

The Red Cross....Providing Shelter, Food, Water, and Critical Need Assistance

Americares....Providing Basics such as Cleaning Supplies and Personal Hygiene Products

America's Second Harvest...Providing Hunger Relief to Hurricane Victims

Hurricane Mural

With Hurricane Katrina pounding New Orleans and Mississippi all day today, I couldn't help but be reminded of this unique mural we created for a store at the DFS Galleria Mall in Saipan.

It was a surf shop, and they wanted a big mural of a hurricane, which was certainly an unusual subject - even more odd is that they wanted it painted on the floor.

But with Silver Hill Atelier, we paint the murals our clients ask for. 

Norvel, the Silver Hill's owner and chief artist airbrushed the mural based on a satellite reference photo of a hurricane we had been given by the client.

We paint cloud murals all the time, but they are usually more of the calm and bucolic variety.  I think Norvel took a particular interest in the challenges of painting the dramatic power of the clouds that make up these vast (and vastly destructive) storm systems.

Coit Tower in San Francisco

Coit Tower in San Francisco is filled with fresco murals created as part of the PWAP (Public Works of Art Project), a precursor program to the WPA Arts Programs of the 1930's and 40's.

The tower has a great website which features history, pictures and information on the murals and artists who created artworks for the tower.

It's also informative about the technique the artists used to create the interior murals; fresco.  This page offers an interesting summary of the technique as used in the Tower.

Silver Hill Atelier recently completed an extensive mural project using true fresco techniques.  You can see pics of it here (the top two photos on the page), and I'll be sure to blog the project at some point in the future!

The Coit Tower website is a fascinating site to start exploring early American public mural projects, as well as learning more about the technique of Fresco. 

A Good Night's Sleep

It's Monday here at Silver Hill, and as usual on Mondays, I wish I had gotten more sleep last night.  Well, if I didn't sleep like a prince, at least I can rest well knowing one of our clients slept like a princess.  The above picture show a ceiling mural of a sky through a rose trellis we did for one room in a client's home.  With the lovely furnishings, the mural completes the room to create a perfectly romantic atmosphere.  Who wouldn't sleep well in such a "dreamy" room?

Seasonal Affective Disorder

Click picture to enlarge....

Today in New York was cold, wet, and grey.

But artists can fix things like that...

You want happy?  Try this one for happy....

This is a mural we created for the fashion label 'Moschino'.  It was painted for their New York City showroom, and it always gives me a smile to look at.  Moschino was a really fun client (we did work for their store as well).  Always pushing the boundries - always doing something unexpected and unusual.  Clients like these can be challenging, but you often do your best work for them.

This mural was a hand-painted rendering of a sunflower, and the 'smile face' was gold leaf on top of the paint (you can see the smile more clearly in the reflection in the mirror to the right of the mural)

Spring seems so so far away.......

A New Mural for A New Location

Recently, we re-located Silver Hill Atelier to new studios in TriBeCa.  We've been busily working to renovate the studio, and of course we new we needed to put an excellent hand-painted mural up in our reception area.

We built a really great curved wall, but what to put on it, to best show-off our skills?  (all pictures enlarge when clicked)

Last fall, we saw an amazing show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art called "A Private Passion - 19th Century Paintings and Drawings from The Grenville L. Winthrop Collection".  It was a really beautiful show, but one of the works that impressed us the most was two studies by Ingres for a painting called, "The Martyrdom of Saint Symphorien".  The finished painting is not so exciting, but the studies, which are not large (both are 24" x 19") have a dynamism and vitality that is remarkable.

Creating a mural size interpretation of these works could be a perfect means to demonstrate our skills in classical painting techniques as well as highlight the dynamic and vital spirit that motivates us at Silver Hill Atelier.

Our wall was 8' x 8' so we had to slightly adjust the proportions.  Also, we knew the reception desk and receptionist would be blocking some of the mural, so we left it more unfinished in those areas.

We painted the mural on heavy weight muslin on another wall in our studio.  Here's a picture of the finished mural on the wall of our studio.

We left a blank strip up at the top so that we could add our company name to the mural in stand-off letters after it was installed.

Our artist who painted this piece is a great admirer of Ingres, and really enjoyed interpreting the details of this incredible study .

We've painted works by Ingres before...

This reproduction of Ingres' "Odalisque"  was painted on a wood panel, and 'cut-out' for installation at one of the Limited's 'Express' stores.

Installing a mural of this size is not too difficult.  The wall should be smooth, sanded, and 'primed for paint' (generally 1-2 coats of a standard interior latex primer).  Even though canvas is going to be put on the wall, defects in the surface can telegraph through, so strive for a smooth even surface.  Typically, we glue the murals to walls with heavy duty vinyl adhesives.  To insure a long-lasting installation, we'll also prime the wall with an adhesive primer. 

Then, it's just centering the mural, applying the adhesive to the wall, and unrolling from the top down.  Wrinkles are smoothed out, and edges are trimmed.

Once the mural was installed, we attached pin-mounted letters with our company name that we had silver-leafed.

It looks great, and we're really happy!