How to Get Ideas for Wall Murals

Video Transcript

"IAN LOVEALL: Hi! I'm Ian Loveall with Expert Village and we're talking about mural painting today. Now, before anything can start with a mural, you have to come up with an idea. Ideas can come from anywhere. The inspiration is all around you. I've got some great examples of some inspirational material here that we are going to take a look at in a little bit. First, I'm going to say get a digital camera and take pictures of everything. I've got one and it goes everywhere with me. You'll never know when you're going to see something that's going to spark your interest or catch your eye. You want to be able to take a picture of it for reference. So, let's take a look at what I've got. So, when I'm looking for ideas I usually start by going to some of my favorite artists. This guy right here Caspar David Friedrich, one of the most famous painters from the Romantic era. He's got really great dark, rich, powerful paintings and I always get some inspiration from him. Anything that has lots of movement and color and motion, you know, whatever catches your eye. Everybody is going to be different. I take pictures of everything. I've got pictures of skies, trees even postcards, you'll never know where you're going to find inspiration. Another thing you can do, magazine clippings. Always be going through magazines. Obviously, please make sure they're your own and not from the doctor's office or library. But you know if you see something that you think you might use, tear it out. I've got still life material, flowers, flowers, birds, arches, skies, whatever you think you might use. I also like to go through some of my old paintings and pull them out and look at them again. You'll never know what's going to hit you. Photographs, again, great, great place to start, scrapbook. Go through your old photo albums, scrapbooks if you've got them. One tool that I cannot stress enough is master studies. Go to a museum and study the master works. You will learn volumes more than anything else can I teach you. Here's an example of a master city I did from a painting that's hanging in the Getty. A lot of museums won't let you take your sketch book in, but you know ask with the docent or security guard and if you're nice enough, you know, they'll usually let you take out your pencil and pattern and do a couple of sketches. The library is a terrific source. A book like this might go for $90 or more in the bookstore. At the library you have access to it for free, so definitely make use of that. And just go until something will hit a chord and it'll get the wheels turning and then you're off and rolling."