Custom designing and painting landscape murals for clients in Naples, Bonita Springs, and Southwest Fl. is a favorite for
muralist/landscape artist Arthur Morehead of
Art-Faux Designs Inc 239 417 1888
Especially when Trompe L’oeil is involved.
Being a “landscape artist” it should not be surprising that painting a Tuscan landscape mural in my studio gives me the ability to paint and send a landscape mural anywhere.
Seasonal residents who stop in at my faux finishing/art studio will often find me working on a “Tuscan landscape mural” or a “landscape painting” and will even see ones I have completed hanging as displays, and some are even completed with trompe loeil techniques. It still amazes me of how some have never seen a landscape mural with trompe loeil effects before and are laughingly surprised when they discover that the painted panels or frames are not even real.
“Landscape Painting” has always been a personal favorite of mine especially when it comes to painting sunsets and sunrises. As a “landscape artist” I love painting “Tuscan landscape murals” and many of my color studies are “landscape paintings”.
This may sound a little weird or maybe even insane but I get excited when I know that a tropical storm or a hurricane may be coming through Southwest Fl because it usually means an opportunity to get some photos of the most beautiful sunsets I have ever seen which I use for reference at times as a landscapes artist.
My last Tuscan landscape mural I completed for a client in Bonita Springs Fl.
This “Tuscan landscape mural” although not quite finished is ready to be installed at this point. I will add the final touches after I see it in place because sometimes the lighting in the home is totally different than what I see in the studio. This particular landscape mural was done in a more intense palette than what I normally use.
As a “landscape artist” I paint a bit differently than when I paint landscape murals.
Some landscape artists paint in a impasto style or some use broken color techniques are more of an impressionistic landscape artist. I try to create realism within everything I paint but I still try to retain the painterly look and feel of a landscape artist. Yes I know it almost sounds contradictory and/or confusing but that’s the whole point. Adding in a little controversy makes it different.
In the first photo of the Tuscan landscape mural everything looked ok but there was something there that I could not pin point that was bothering the landscape artist side of me. So I shot a close up photo and now I can see where I needed to make adjustments in the landscape mural.
The longer I have a landscape mural in the studio the more I am apt to discover and correct things as a landscape artist. As I look at these photos I see things that a camera can pick up that my eye doesn’t and I am able to critique my own work, such as I noticed the two cypress trees to the left are out of perspective to the overly contrasted houses in the middle ground and the background needs an over glaze. As I paint a landscape mural I take photos of my work when I am finished for the day. I then study the photos at different camera settings to view things such as intensity, value and of course color and sometimes I’ll add subtle elements to the work to balance out the composition. The camera for this landscape artist is a very useful tool.
As we drop the view further down the landscape mural to include the foreground I can now see that the houses are as I thought, over contrasted, and I may need to warm them up with a bit more of ochre yellow. One of the things that I find with painting a landscape mural with acrylics is that it is a bit tricky, at least for me to gain the richness from the acrylics like you can when using oils.
There are two colors in the oil medium that I am very fond of, and one is not even a color which is Flake White and the other is one of my favorites which is Sap Green. The flake white does not come in an acrylic and even as an oil it is getting harder to come by because of its toxicity and the meddling of the E.P.A. on V.O.C. standards, so often times titanium white is used. As a landscape artist my issue with the titanium white when painting a landscape mural is I just don’t like the “chalky” appearance it has and passes on to other colors when mixing it into them. I see this in both oils and acrylics but when using flake white in oils I don’t detect this problem as much.
On the opposite side of the value scale when painting a landscape mural I was having an issue with basically the same thing with my darkest darks when using acrylics. Trying to find an acrylic to achieve the depth and richness that I get from the oil version of “Sap Green” was a chore until I discovered Windsor Newton’s acrylic version Permanent Sap Green and was thrilled with the results. Although not finished yet you can surely see the depth I have created within the landscape murals deepest shadows of the foreground without making it look opaque and flat looking. Now if I could only find an acrylic white that is the equivalent to the oil’s flake white I would be in landscape artists Heaven.
I will post a final photo of this Tuscan Landscape Mural once it is installed
Well I have completed the landscape mural and have installed it at the clients residence. At that time a I made the following adjustments that I mentioned above and was right on most of them. Here are the final results but I painted the final flowers in more of an impressionistic style to flow with a nearby oil painting
