It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas

As the holiday swings into full gear, we are reminded of a fun job we completed a couple of years ago for the ornament maker Christopher Radko. 

He has a showroom in Atlanta, and he commissioned us to create a winter/holiday scene to line the hallway that approaches the showroom.

The concept was that as you approached the showroom, you were walking through a street of a magical Christmas village.  On either side would be shops and storefronts highlighting the Christmas Spirit.

Now, we could have done a straight mural, but we determined it would be more fun to create a 2-D mural with some 3-D elements.  This would increase the illusion, and be more fun for viewers.

This project began as we begin almost all projects; with design sketches in pencil for the clients approval.  (Click pictures for enlarged view)

The pencil sketches help us determine a composition that will be acceptable.  We then typically make a color rendering, or a partial color rendering to finalize colors for the project.

These renderings, which we call 'maquettes,' form the roadmap for the project - a vision that both our artists and the client agree on so that the everyone involved has a clear idea of how the project will appear when complete.  Of course, there are differences of interpretation as one goes from small scale maquette to full sized artwork, so the maquette is not the answer to all differences of interpretation that may arise.  Nevertheless, maquettes are a very helpful and sensible tool that are beneficial to both the artist and the clients, and we recommend it for all projects.

After the maquette is approved, we start to paint the project.  Like almost all projects we do, the mural portion of the project was painted on heavy weight flame retardant muslin in our New York Studio.

Here's a picture of some of the 3-D elements we made for the mural - window casings, mullions, dormers, crown moldings, and pediments.  These 3-D elements were painted, and then, after the full mural was installed in the space, these elements were installed on top of the mural, and integrated into the mural.

Here's a couple of pictures of the installed mural.  The two images show what you would see as you approach the door to the showroom.  On the image on the right, you can see the 3-D elements, like the ledge above the store front windows with 'snow' (foam) that we painted with blue iradescent paints to add a little sparkle.  We also had lighting incorporated into the storefront to further the illusion we were creating.

All in all, a successful project to put one in the Christmas Spirit!