Finally! A Mural For Me!
My wife has always joked with me that I'm like the cobbler who is so busy making shoes for everyone that he never makes them for himself or his family. She happens to be right! Out of the hundreds of murals I have made for my clients, I never have made a mural for my walls -- until now!
I have always loved the San Juan Islands, located in the northwest corner of Washington State. Since the 70's, I've chartered sailboats there and taught several people to sail larger boats while having a splendid time on their vacation.
For my mural, I wanted to change the color of the land to go well with my light green office walls. I changed the color to Garland Green (Sherwin-Williams). I also changed the dark magenta shipping lanes to a more eye-appealing SW Sapphire Ice.
I also wanted to "frame the mural" but do so with a rope border. I changed the color of the silver rope to a SW Silken Moss for the dark brown, and SW Green Tea for the light brown.
The rope border presented a challenge. As my clients will tell you what I tell them, "we can only print in rectangles." This is true of the mural with a rope border, but this graphic rope, which looks like the old three-strand line, has contours all the way around the mural. I didn't want the background to be white, so I had to get a small pair of scissors and trim the white away from the rope. Now, when it is mounted on my light green wall, the rope will stand out and enhance the framing of the chart.
Another feature we wanted to add was our cartouche. This is the freebie that we offer all our clients to show their role in designing their mural. We positioned ours in the lower left-hand corner of our mural.
A modern version of the cartouche has been a regular option for our clients for some time now. We think it is a lovely way to give credit where credit is due: to our clients who first imagined a nautical chart mural on their wall.
Tomorrow, the paperhanger is coming to install the mural in our office. If I can get my time-lapse camera working, I'll have a cool movie to show in the next news article. When it is all done, it will look like this:
