THE WHALE
PRE PRODUCTION
The idea for this mural first sprung into my head while I was at work one day. It was like a surge of creativity that I hadn’t felt in a long while had entered my body. I had this urge to make a big painting all of a sudden and the idea of doing a mural for my school had always been something I wanted to do since a former student had done a mural the year prior. That afternoon I went home and spent the whole night watching David Lynch and Wes Anderson movies while drawing on my iPad to create the design I wanted to put on a wall. I already had a idea of what wall I wanted to create the piece on, one was a stairwell next to the cafeteria. So keeping the overall environment in mind, I drew a piece that I knew could fit into that wall. The design itself was inspired mostly by the tattoo I had just recently gotten on my arm. It was a line of wisp along my forearm that my co-worker, who goes by Zoyakeko and is now an artist based in Philidelphia, had designed and tattooed on me.
After I had drawn it in black and white I took it to work the next day and got some feedback from my coworkers and some fellow customers that I knew were skilled in drawing and design. One of the customers, who happens to also be an art teacher at my school, gave me some advice on adding color to it. Originally I planned to keep it black and white as that’s mostly my personal style, but I took his advice anyway and created a duplicate of the drawing and did a colored version of it. After getting almost entirely positive feedback I was confident in my design and decided it was time to bring it to my art teacher and principal so I could launch the piece.
Before I took it to my art teacher however, I decided to take some pictures of the wall I was planning on painting on, and I rendered the design onto the image so that my teacher and principal could get a better idea of what the painting will look like on the wall.
Thanks to how supportive the staff is at my school, my art teacher was more than happy to help with this mural, and my principal was as well more than happy to permit me to do the mural, the only issue is that they didn’t think the wall I had chosen was the best spot. Not only would the stairs become a hazard and would be tricky to work on, but my principal also added that the stairs get very busy, and dirt and dust build up pretty quickly on those walls, he was worried the artwork would get ruined and deteriorate quicker if it was placed in the stairs, so I decided it’d be best to find a different wall, and thank god I did because I ended up finding a big, empty space on the 11th floor that was perfect for this piece. Not only is the 11th floor already themed with blue walls but the large windows allow for a beautiful natural light to come in next to the piece, and the wall is large and empty- just perfect for an even larger scaled mural.
So I picked the wall, got the design worked out, and made a list of all the paint shades and supplies I’d need. Working with the store I work at, Binders Art Supplies and Frames, my art teacher was given a budget from the school to buy the paint we’d need, and now we just had to wait for the supplies to be delivered to us so I could begin production.
PRODUCTION
DAY 1:
The paint still hadn’t come in yet, it was taking a bit longer than expected for us to be able to put the order in, so I wasn’t able to begin painting as quickly as I hoped, but that’s ok, because I could still go ahead and draw out the design in graphite. That’s what day 1 was dedicated to. To start, I had to get these two art pieces that were drilled into the wall off. I talked to one of the art teachers who had the equipment to get these nails out, and we were able to get the pieces down with ease. I took the pieces back down to the art room for my teacher to have back and then I was able to begin drawing.
I had my projector which I brought to school, sadly though my tripod for the projector had broken just a few days before, luckily the film teacher, Mr.Alfred, was kind enough to let me borrow one of the tripods from his classroom.
I then spent around 4 hours that day tracing out the design as I projected it onto the wall. This part was quite calming, considering not much thought has to go into it. All I had to do was put my headphones on and draw to my heart’s desire, it was very freeing being able to just draw onto a wall like that… One issue I came across pretty quickly was that the projector didn’t cover the whole wall, and the staircase behind me kept me from being able to push the projector back further to cover the wall. There was no way to fix this problem, so I had to find a way to work around it, and what I found was the best way to do this was just to mark down the corners of the screen and move the project left and right up or down, and draw the mural in sections, this method was working pretty well until I realized I wasn’t going to be able to finish this mural in one day, and that It was going to be a struggle to get the sections to be aligned fully having to pack everything up and put it back in its exact position the next day. I tried my best to avoid this being an issue by marking down where the projection was on the floor with tape and keeping the image pulled up on my laptop the entire rest of the day so that the zoom % and placement would stay the same, even though it drained my battery relatively quickly and made my laptop run slower which and made it difficult to get work done.
DAY 2:
Day two of tracing was similar, I had some issues with aligning the picture exactly the same but overall I got it just about right. I had to use the ladder that day, and one thing I found to be a bit tedious was how quickly I kept running out of graphite and had to keep sharpening my pencils, this became annoying pretty quickly when I was on the ladder because I had to keep going up and down to go to the trash, I ended up deciding to just use my pocket as a mini trashcan and than emptying it at the end of the day. I also made the decision to get all of the bottom of the wall done on day 1 and worry about the top of the wall on day 2 so that I didn’t have to carry a big, heavy ladder there and back every single day, and so I didn’t have to bother Mr. Alfred with borrowing his ladder every day. The art room is on the 4th floor, and Mr. Alfred’s film class is on the 11th floor, only a few doors down from the mural wall, so it was much easier to borrow his ladder than the art rooms. I followed this rule for about the entire rest of the project, whenever I started painting a color, I would focus on the bottom, so I didn’t have to use the ladder every single day.
I also ended up having to ask my good friend, Moises, if he could go grab me some more graphite pencils from the art room, As the pencil I was using broke and I wasn’t comfortable with leaving my laptop and projector alone for that long so I could go down to the art room to grab more pencils, and I knew that Moises didn’t have a 4th period due to our schools “minimum day” program. He was happy to help me out, but the only issue was I needed a few different kinds of pencils, 6B 4B HB, and he doesn’t do any art, so he was extremely confused. I told him to just show my art teacher the text message and she’ll grab everything for him because I didn’t expect him to know which was which and what the difference was. However by day 2 of production I was done with tracing, and now It was just a matter of Gessoing and painting.
DAY 3:
This day was all dedicated to Gessoing, the paint still hadn’t gotten there yet so I had some time to wait before actually starting the painting process. Gessoing was relatively easy, Mrs.Shepard gave me a big bucket of gesso, however, I only used a small portion of it because I didn’t want to put such a thick layer of gesso on the drawing because for one I still needed to see the drawing and also because I didn’t want to use up so much gesso. So I diluted the gesso with some water and it was a perfect consistency, just enough to prep the wall but also not too thick to where I couldn't see anything under it. I only gessoed the drawing though, not the whole wall, I did a silhouette of the drawing in Gesso, because I didn’t want the wall to be a completely different shade of white from the rest of the walls. Gessoing only took me about 3 hours, and was the quickest and easiest section of the painting to do.
DAY 4:
About a week later the paint had arrived, and I could start the painting process. I knew that I wanted to organize the process by color. Starting with the blues, and then doing the white, and finishing it all off with the black. Day 4 was probably the most complicated and irritating. Mixing paint was never my strong suit, and doing it in such big portions made it more difficult. I was given a bucket of blue, green, black, and white. My Art teacher also gave me some empty containers to mix the paint in.
I spent 4 hours just mixing paint, and I was at the school until about 6 pm and was too tired to start any painting so I decided to save the actual painting part for the next day. So all of day 4 was just dedicated to mixing paint. I start with just mixing the main blue color that is on the whale’s body. It took me forever to get to the right shade, and even then it was still much darker than I hoped. I struggled a lot with getting to the right mix of blue and teal and getting it to be grey enough but not too dark. It was very tough, and eventually, I decided that I wasn’t going to be able to get it to the exact right shade, but I was happy with the blue color I had and came to the conclusion that it didn’t have to be exactly like the digital drawing, which is true. So it took me about 4 hours to get this blue to be the right color of blue.
DAY 5:
The first day of actually painting. My art teacher had provided me with a large storage bin where I could keep all my paint buckets, brushes, cheese mats, water containers, tissues, and other supplies so that I could easily just walk into her room, grab the bin, and walk up to the 11th floor. I started with the blue body of the whale, which I was able to finish in 1 day. I didn’t use the ladder today, as I didn’t think I needed it, by the time I got to the top of the whale I realized I did need it but I decided to just grab a chair instead since I didn’t have the will power to haul a ladder twice my size down the haul and back. It was a bit of a struggle reaching due to me being 5’1 but I managed to do it by stepping on my tippy toes and using the longest brush I had.
The first problem I came across with my paint however is that it was very streaky. Even when using big portions of paint, I found it leaving these streaks behind and it wasn’t giving me the full coverage I needed. This ended up being a huge problem for me because that meant I had to go back over the paint a 2nd time, but I found that the best thing to keep this from happening was to one, add a lot more matte medium than I thought I would need, and two, being a lot of more generous with the amount of paint I was using. So on day 6, I did have to go over some spots with the blue because I needed some spots to dry completely before I went back over them, or else it would just cause more streaks and would leave some weird textures behind.
DAY 6:
On Day 6 I started coloring in the wisp, I started with the blue that I had mixed for the whale’s body. And that was about all I did that day. Originally with the wisp I wanted to stay exact as to which shades of blue were where. I drew little points on the drawing with red dots to try and pick out which lines were which shade but this ended up adding unnecessary restrictions and stress to the project. Having a different shade of blue in a different spot didn’t really make much of a difference to the look of the painting so I gave up on that idea pretty quickly and decided to just put the shades wherever I found fit. One issue I came across though was that my tracing for the wisps where a little confusing, So I decided to just say “fuck it” and paint the wisp in whichever way I wanted as long as I was kind of following the lines I drew. At the end of the day, the wisps were meant to be a symbolic gesture to freedom and creativity so it's okay if the wisps aren't exact to the drawing because they aren’t like the whale which needs to be proportional. I ended up finding that giving myself the freedom to kind of do whatever with them was a lot more fun and freeing than trying to follow the exact lines. Having a little creative freedom with production made the project a lot more fun for me.
DAY 7:
On day 7 I started adding the 2nd shade. I ended up just taking some leftover paint from the last blue shade and putting it into a different container than adding some white to lighten it up. I didn’t want to use all the blue incase I made a mistake and needed that shade again, so I just took a little bit of it and sealed it up really tight to save for any accidents. This part was reallatively chill, It was a lot of just looking around and choosing which spots I thought this shade would be the best in. I do want to give a shoutout and thankyou to my friend LaMarr who brought me a sprite from the vending machines on the 3rd floor while he was on his lunch break.
DAY 8:
On day 8 I only had 1 blue shade left for the wisp, and I couldn't decide if I wanted to go for an even lighter shade of blue or do a much darker shade. I asked my bf and one of my friends, while I was waiting for a response I decided to go ahead and go for a darker shade and I mixed some of the blue paint from the previous shade with some black to make it a lot dark, but I ended up not really liking the idea and than both of them said to do a lighter shade. I decided to take a step back and look at the painting from afar, visualizing what the whale would look like in my head, with a lighter shade, and with a darker shade. I decided the lighter shade was going to be better, especially because I already have some pretty dark shades and it will really pop out, especially once I added the black outlines. (Also shoutout to my boyfriend Carter who bought me a sprite while on his lunch break).
DAY 9:
Break had just recently ended and I was eager to begin working on the project today. My goal was to get all the while on the whale's body done today, however, Mrs.Shepard was not there and I ran out of white paint and needed to get some more from her. I decided that instead of waiting another day to start, I would just begin the black paint. However, I immediately came across some irritating issues. For one the paint was streaky just as with the others, but it was much more noticeable in the black. I also found that the brushes were not making the job much easier either as the bristles were sticking out and leaving these tiny little lines everywhere. I found that the best way to avoid this was just to push down hard and try to keep the brushes intact and overestimate how much paint I needed on the given spaces. Over the weekend while I was at my job at binders I went ahead and bought A good high-quality brush to tackle this issue with the bristles.
DAY 10:
On day 10 my teacher was back and I was able to get a hold of some white paint. I went ahead and did all the white today, and I was contemplating staying longer to work on some of the black paint but in the end, I decided to just go home because I had some stuff to do. The white was relatively straightforward and simple, not too much to add, however, some of my sketches on the lines on the whale were very confusing and I kind of just decided to paint some spots all white and not bother following the lines because white can easily be painted over and I simply couldn't tell what was going on in the sketch.
DAY 11:
On day 11 I stayed at the school till 7 pm. I wanted to get as much done as I could and try and get the painting done in the next two weeks. So I decided that I really needed to lock in and begin staying at the school for longer periods of time. I didn't get done as Much as I was hoping to but I still got a big chunk done. The black paint takes a lot longer to do despite how little surface area it covers compared to the blues, But because the black has to be clean and precise it's much more time-consuming to paint than the other colors. The nice brush I got ended up being very effective because it was SO much easier to have clean edges and a steady stable hand with this brush. I almost ended up leaving early today because I was hungry and tired and bored, but I ordered some door dash and called my boyfriend and a friend so that I had someone to talk to kind of distract me while I mindlessly painted. I also found that Jazz music and EDM music like Aphex Twins the most effective in keeping me on task and focused while painting.
The Final Piece + Reflection :
As I approach the final days of working on the mural, a sense of accomplishment started to settle in. Spending countless hours painting the black outline, I began to witness my efforts come together. Despite initially estimating a much shorter timeframe for completion, the sheer scale of the project and challenges of balancing it with school and work really changed that. What I had thought might take a couple months became a 5 month journey, however with no deadline and the freedom to work on the mural whenever I pleased this was no issue at all. There were moments when I felt overwhelmed and tempted to abandon the project when obstacles seemed impossible to overcome. However, persevering through those challenged where immensely rewarding. This mural was an unexpected adventure, yet it became a defining experience of my senior year.
Grate for the opportunity, I not only grew my artistic skills but also discovered personal growth. The mural provided me with a new sense of belonging within the school community. It became a sanctuary for myself in the school and allowed emergency to immerse myself in my thoughts and connect with other students. After putting so much time and effort into the whale, I found myself really connecting with the piece. Knowing that I've left a lasting imprint on the school fills me with pride, making the mural one of my most cherished accomplishments.
I extend my gratitude to everyone who supported me, thank-you to everyone who was so helpful in the process, my friends who would bring me up supplies and sodas, Moises, Carter, Lamar...
To my teachers who supported me with encouragement, supplies, letting me leave class early to go work on the project.... Mr.Alfred, Ms.Shepard, Mrs.Johnston, Ms.Lemaster...
Thank-you to everyone.
