Communication Mural

Ok this is kind of overdue - we actually finished the mural last friday, but I was too busy working on the pre-posted animation to make an update about it. I designed and painted the mural with Audrey, Krissie, Diana, and Jahiakil. Our theme was communication, and we each sketched some of the specific objects we planned on including in our design beforehand.

First though, the following is my sketch of what our project was generally planned to look like after we all combined our initial ideas (I'm not including the actual photoshopped conglomeration because I don't have it):

In preparation, I sketched a bunch of useless metal panels, a bionic heart, and some ribs:

And so it began.

Have some progress pics.

THE END

In order to keep the mural cohesive and not psychedelically out of control, we decided on a largely gray palette with specks of yellow, red, and green, but towards the end we threw in some purple as well. I'm quite happy with how it turned out in the end - I think everyone got some of their ideas into the piece, so it was an even distribution of planning, and all the ideas managed to fit together really well. The grays give the mural a really techno-futuristic look that I like, but the little bits of color prevent it from seeming cold. I love the symmetry and vertical energy as well. 

Although some parts still need some work, like the anatomy and background coloring, I think correcting them wouldn't have been very difficult if we just had more time. We were rather rushed towards the end: our group took the longest time to complete the mural, partly due to stupid mistakes like forgetting to put pins under the gessoed parachute canvas which resulted in rips and subsequent recalibrations of the original sketch, and partly just due to the amount of detail in the painting itself. So I guess we may need to work on our efficiency more. 

In terms of teamwork, I think we cooperated pretty well. Although at the beginning there was a little awkward friction in terms of whose ideas would be incorporated more (can't say I didn't contribute to that >_>), Ken came around and helped us find a way to get all our ideas in, and once we began actually painting, everyone became better team players, so that towards the end, I'd say we were working pretty well together.

ON TO THE GREETING CARDS!!!!