Jazzbar Mural Project - Illustration
For my illustration exam, I was assigned to make a mural. In this post I will show you how I made my decisions and why I made them as well as how I worked my way to the final product. I will also briefly explain the situation of every progress shot I made.
So before I started working, I was given a briefing where it explained the situation and what needed to be done. I was given the option to choose between three buildings that needed a mural; The Botanist, Jazz bar, and the municipal office (gemeentekantoor). I decided to go with the Jazz bar given I'm mostly familiar with that building and that I like music myself!
Unfortunately, I couldn't find a lot of information about the building that was in the shopping streets of Eindhoven. All I know was that the company went bankrupt and that a new restaurant took it's place.
I made 3 concept sketches for this mural. The first sketch (top left) was something I made without giving it much thought. I only knew that it would be fun to add an instrument that was popular in Jazz music and then I played around with some letters from the word "Jazz". This was also the moment where I decided to experiment with color a bit before I moved on to the next sketch.
The second sketch (top right) was supposed to be a silhouette of a group of jazz musicians displayed on the wall. The background would be just white and the silhouette would be black, of course. But I find that a bit boring, basic and simple. It wasn't exactly what I was looking for. A few elements were missing out.
Which brings us to the next and final concept sketch (lower left corner). I thought it would be fun to portray a sax player that played music with the music notes in the playful shapes. The shapes represent the drinks that are served in the bar. I thought it'd be fun to draw them in a flow-y way to make it seem more organic and that it wouldn't look boring and stiff. Plus it fit with the moodboard I made. So I decided to go with the last concept and worked it out to the final concept after I got my work pitched and got the "Go" from my 'client'.
After I got the green light from my 'client', I quickly continued to work out my final concept design and experimented with different background colors. I was already planning to have a gradient as my background, considering the foreground already looks playful and full enough, so I didn't want the background to become too much of a distraction for the audience.
I looked up a few images that was in relation with the Jazz bar and ended up finding some of their social media photos and use those to figure out what kind of mood I wanted to give to my mural. I decided to go with a sunset since drinks are often related to sunset-themed colors and they sometimes give off such vibes.
The reason why I specifically went from dark to light is because I want to show the audience that music is capable of brightening up the mood in a room. So we start with a silhouette of a sax player in the right lower corner and then we slowly build up the bright colors to the upper left corner. The music and the playful shapes are there to sort of "push" the colors forward. It also makes more sense with the flow of the shapes and the music notes.
Here we have the finished final product of my mural design. It looks a little bit different because I drew it on a bigger scale. The concept one was drawn on a smaller scale, but I'm quite satisfied with how the final product came to be.
And here is the mock-up of my final product. This shows how it would look like if my design was actually painted on the building itself. I tried my best to make it fit but since I was working with a grid, the measurements might be a little off. I went with different perspectives so you could see how it would look from another point of view instead of just seeing it from one view.
I'm quite pleased with the results of this project. Murals aren't really my thing, but I think I did pretty well for my first time!
