See the process for a mural by illustrator Allison Cole

How I created my mural by illustrator Allison Cole

Illustrator Allison Cole, who was previously represented by Lilla Rogers, writes:

I was recently invited to participate in a group show at Montserrat College of Art in Beverly, MA, called Seven: A Performative Drawing Project.

Seven different artists were each given one of the seven walls of the main gallery to paint or draw on. The whole process was recorded with a digital camera taking photos at different intervals that will eventually be compiled into a stop-motion video, recording each artist’s process. It was a tremendous opportunity and I was honored to be invited to participate.

I wanted to share my process of the creation of my mural in the photos below. It was a wonderful experience to take what started out as a small ink drawing and translate it onto a large wall with paint and big brushes.

I’ve never worked this large before (15 feet wide, 10 feet tall), so I thoroughly prepped and planned before beginning on the project. My printmaking background definitely came in handy for this – I approached everything in layers. I started with many different ideas and eventually settled on the diamond girl character, and colored and mocked up my ink drawing in Illustrator.

The first step in painting the mural was mapping out the hair and face with the aid of a projector and painter’s tape to get the scale and placement correct.

I rolled the the navy blue paint for the hair and the yellow paint for the face and neck onto the wall.

Next, I created a white underpainting with gesso for the areas of the hair that would become the leaves and flowers.

I painted the colors on in order just like I would if I was screen printing: white, yellow, pink, gray, blue. Part of the fun of the process for me is seeing what will happen – the final mural did not turn out exactly as the original drawing, but I’m pretty happy with all of the little changes that happened along the way.