Back in February I visited a home in New Hampshire to talk about the home owners’ desire for me to create a mural for three walls of their beautiful home’s parlor. They are both members of North Country Hounds, a foxhunt in the local area, and they requested scenes of the hunt and its members and members’ horses. They also wanted their home, barn and town represented. I took lots of measurements and some photos and headed back to the studio to start working out the different scenes for the walls.

Using old photos of Lyme, New Hampshire and photos of the individual hunt members and their horses, I drew up little pen and ink sketches which showed my intent. When these were approved, I painted what I call “sketches” on canvas. These are painted to-scale and when they are accepted by the customer, I am able to drop them into the photos I took of the room so they can get a good idea of what the room will look like with my paintings on the walls!
With the layout, colors and theme of the mural completely planned out, it was time to start preparing the canvas panels. It needs to be shrunk and primed before I can start painting any scenes.

 

Layers of washes are applied for the sky, distant mountains and foreground on all three panels so that they are consistent colors and intensity as your eye travels around the room. I also have to make sure the corners meet up. I measure off where the windows and doors will be, but I paint right over those so that we have wiggle room when we are installing the panels on the walls. The little canvas sketches are used as reference as I work out where the mountains, trees and hills will go.

When the washes are dry, I isolate one wall and start drawing out details: buildings, fences, stone walls, larger trees and then horses and riders, hounds and foliage. Then the painting begins.

I work on the panels on my large studio table (12′ X 16′) and occasionally I will hang the mural on my studio wall so I can see how it looks straight on and at the height it will be in the home. After the three panels are completed, they all need to be finished with a coat of sealer so that the walls can be cleaned and they are UV protected. When that’s all done, they get rolled up and a date for installation is scheduled.

Charlie Gilley of Gilley Restorations has hung all of my New England murals. He is great to work with. We apply paste, position the panels, check for straightness, make little adjustments and get it all worked out before Charlie does the final trim work around all of the edges to create the final masterpiece. You can see all 8 hours of our installation summed up in this 12 minute video!

 

This was my favorite mural to create so far! Painting horses, riders, hounds, old houses and historic places makes me very happy. I’m looking forward to creating more of these soon!