The O.S.P.C.A. Wildlife Mural

Another piece I need to guilt myself into finishing.  This is a painting I've been working on for some time in the foyer of the Ontario S.P.C.A. Wildlife Rehabilitation Center in Midland, Ontario.



The idea for this came from the poster I had done, entitled "Joy of Animals".  Because the poster had included domestic animals, we decided to replace these with wild animals.  The mural is being done in acrylic, directly on the wall which has been gessoed to receive the paint.  I used an opaque projector to cast the image of the poster on the wall, and traced out the animals we planned to keep.  Then I drew the new wildlife in the spaces where the pets and farm animals had been deleted. Below is a closeup of the sketch.

To mark out the edges of the image without actually marking on the wall, I placed straight pins into the plaster and marked off the edges with thread. I didn't want to use tape, as I knew it would be up for some time, and I didn't want it to stick permanently, or take the top layer of gesso primer off the plaster.

Each of the animals takes anywhere from four to eighteen hours to complete. They are photographic in their realism.

  It's taken me well over three hundred hours so far, and it's only about half done.   I hope to have this done by the end of 2006.