Thoughts from start to finish.
Since the closure of the Grange-over-Sands youth group, coordinators (one of them being my aunt) were faced with the awkward decision of how to use the remaining funds. When the club was active, one of their repeating projects would be to design and produce a public mural in a well-known bus shelter in pig lane. Otherwise known as ‘The Pig-Hut’, it was also used by teenagers as a local hangout spot in the evenings. Because this project was often successful and the old mural needed redoing, It was decided that the remaining funds would be put towards creating one final mural as a gift to Grange from the former youth group.
Fortunately for me, as I knew one of the co-ordinators, had just finished my fine art degree and had some previous experience painting murals (one in my bedroom and another over the front door of a friend’s house). My aunt thought it would be a prime opportunity for me to gain more experience in this and act as a starting point in my professional creative career.
I was excited when the idea was first suggested to me in June (2019), and yes to it immediately. But my limited knowledge of creating artworks for public spaces, my inexperience in leading a group of young people, and my controllable fear of public speaking made me incredibly apprehensive. Often meaning I needed some emotional support and positive encouragement from family members.
As the mural was outside, we decided to begin painting in spring 2020 and used the winter months to research different elements of the town, draft up some designs, gather volunteers, and buy supplies for the project.
HINDSIGHT TIP: Always buy good quality tools and paints and not the cheaper “value for money” kind. You’ll only end up paying for the good quality ones later and would have wasted time, energy, and part of your budget trying to make the cheaper tools perform well.
To my slight frustration, only one volunteer (Katie) out of the three or four volunteers I had anticipated actually showed up throughout the whole project. On the plus side, this meant that I didn’t have to speak to a group and could direct my attention to one person, and also meant I could practice leading a project on a very small scale.
In the early months of 2020, I ran a few practical workshops for Katie. Such as, observation exercises and identifying elements of the town through a ‘sketch and walk’. After this, we chose specific drawings we felt had the potential to add to the design.
Another workshop involved covering up the previous mural and teaching about the different tools and techniques to successfully starting a mural. Meaning, what sort of paint would be needed, what roller and nap length (amount of roller fluffiness) would be suitable for painting different textured surfaces, wall preparation, etc.
TIP: When covering bright colours, which would take at least five layers of white to hide, use a coat of light grey to neutralise the colours and apply one or two layers of white afterwards. It saved tonnes of time and worked like a dream.
As the previous mural was painted with spray paint, I wasn’t sure how well the grey, water-based masonry paint would sit over the top. So in early March (2020), we decided to add a layer of the masonry paint before I travelled to Kent for a week to see my family.
When I was finally able to return after lockdown five months later, I saw that the masonry paint had, had no issues aside from two or three small spots where the paint had a tacky, almost gooey texture. Perhaps this was from the patches being washed and had not fully dried before painting? Either way, another two coats of masonry seemed to fix it.
During the end periods of lockdown, I and Katie spoke over Zoom, finding reference pictures, developing our design, and started making colour swatches ready for when we could continue the project. I found it difficult to run workshops this way as I’m not a very technical person and found it awkward to host meetings when it would so long to draw/alter the design and have my laptop run slowly at the same time. If I did this again, I would educate myself more on the software I was using, plan the sessions more thoroughly, and use a computer instead of the potato that is my laptop.
I did feel guilty for the residents who had to look out their windows at a depressing grey wall for the whole of isolation and easing of the lockdown period, not that it could be helped. Needless to say, they were overjoyed when we added a white masonry coat and begun working again.
When it actually came to painting, we faced more issues. From what I thought was a simple design, full of bold shapes and simple lines/curves, turned out to be a nightmare without the use of a projector. We couldn’t use one as we were working outside and weren’t near a power socket, but it probably would have saved so much time! So, we had to hand measure and draw all of the main elements like the background lines, curves, clock tower, etc, before we could do anything else.
I originally planned to use cardboard stencils for the repeating shapes, such as fish, waves, pigs, flowers, etc, and draw around and paint in every single one, which we originally did for the green section at the bottom. But it took so long and ended up with slightly scruffy edges (which was partly the fault of the paint) that I realised that this technique wasn’t going to work for the rest of the design.
As a result, my aunt (who was also helping me) tried finding some stamp material that was large enough for the stencils but couldn’t find any anywhere. I realised that I had some old fleece pyjama pants and cut them up and spray mounting them to the cardboard as a last resort, hoping it would make a suitable stamp.
It wasn’t perfect, but it worked well enough with a little touching up around the edges and a quick second coat over the centre, depending on the opacity of the colour. Compared to the previous method, the stamps were a blessing!
Finally, when the painting was complete, we had to seal it with a varnish to protect it against, scratches, dirt, and graffiti. We struggled to find a suitable varnish but eventually decided on a product that is used to protect wooden and slate floors. Again we weren’t sure how well this would work but took the advice of the workers in the paint shop that it should be fine. So, we added two thin coats, but I think I might come back and add another two as I don’t feel confident that it’s protected enough.
But that’s to be done another day.
