First off I said we we would need individual color reference prints of each element of the overall design. These will be handed out to each artist who wishes to work on a portion of the mural. Each person can only cover so much ground so it is usually best to keep their focus on one manageable area. In this case I thought perhaps several of the smaller balloons could be worked on at the same time. So, I brought each element into Photoshop and printed each one as large as I could on a letter sized sheet.
I learned from past events that I spent a lot of time digging through a pile of art to find one color copy for a particular element. This time I decided to get a 3 ring binder and put each art element in its own clear plastic sleeve. This way it will be much easier to flip through and find each part of the design and hand it to the assisting artist, as needed. The plastic sleeves will also help keep paint off the color print while the artist works.
Next up, transparencies will be required to project the mural art onto the wall. As I mentioned before, the size of the transparencies is determined by a couple of factors. One is the size of the platen on the projector being used. My projector will accommodate approximately a 10" x 10" transparency sheet. The other factor is how far away or close to the wall the projector can actually be set up. I have attended Walldog events in the past where the wall was so close to a busy street that there was a limit as to how far away from the wall the projector could be set up. In this type of case, it would be best to split the image to be projected into two or more sections that then could be pieced together when projected onto the wall. I decided to print the lower portion of the art at about 10" wide and try to project that in one piece. If I need to be 100 feet away from the wall in order to get the art to fit in the required space, I might not have that much room at the site. The light would also diffuse a great deal at that distance. So, I printed out the same art in two enlarged sections that could be projected in two sections and pieced together on the wall.
In the photo below and above, there are two printed transparencies of the art blown up in sections and one with the entire image on one sheet.
I also need to think about possible "issues" with the art once I get on site. Occasionally, I discover that projecting the image might not work very well and that a pounce pattern might work better. So it is necessary to bring all the art, stored in every possible format, so I can pull it up and hopefully handle the "issues" as they occur...which can be often!
I usually always bring a copy of the art that has the layout grip printed over the image at a certain scale. In this case I scaled the art at 1/2" = 1'- 0". If need be, I could lay out the whole wall using the grid system. Basically, I would snap chalk lines on the wall at full scale (12" squares) and then use the 1/2" art grid to draw each square on the wall. As you can imagine this is probably the slowest methods for getting the art drawn on the wall. I had two scaled versions of the art printed and laminated at the local Kinko's/FedEx store. I will mount the large prints onto foam core and use them as references for the overall mural layout. Visitors to the mural painting site can also look at the large prints to see what is being painted in front of them.
OK, let's do a little inventory so we don't forget anything.
1. 3 ring binder with color reference prints of all art and projector transparencies....Check
2. 2 scaled prints, one clean version and one version with layout grid....check
3. Stretched canvas art to be donated to the events charity auction....check
4. Copies of all art on disc, thumb drive and backed up on laptop....check
Next up we should look into some of the equipment that I will be packing up for this trip. Since this mural demands that a fair amount of time be spent in lifts off the ground, we will need to consider that.....next time!
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