BOULDIN CREEK MURAL

The Process

Last year, I was asked if I would be interested in designing and painting a large mural on a new building being designed by a local architecture firm. I have always felt something in common between my artwork and some of the design characteristics of contemporary architecture, so the project excited me from the start. On top of that, the theme was “tech meets nature”, an area I’m always stoked to explore. We agreed the project was a great match, and the work began in earnest.

Architect’s Rendering of an Early Mural Sketch

Inspiration

The building is located close to Bouldin Creek in Austin, which has an associated greenbelt pathway with natural woods. Part of the architect’s artistic vision for the building was to celebrate the creek and natural surroundings, and the mural was meant to play a part in that. Additionally, because Austin is one of the largest tech hubs in the US, there was a desire to see that viewpoint reflected in the aesthetics of the artwork.

DESIGN

I felt that a design based around Flow Fields would best capture the nature of the trees, topology, and creek bed in the area. The design evolved over time, but the core concept felt solid to me early on. Here you can see three different designs generated by the program before it was finalized:

EXECUTION

The mural itself was painted using a stencil pasting technique. The first step in this process was to print full-scale stencils for the entire mural. That means roughly forty sheets of the size seen here in order to cover the wall:

The stencils were adhered to the wall using a weak starch paste. Next, the dark portions were cut out by hand using an X-Acto knife.

Cutting out the stencils after pasting them to the wall

Then, the stencil was painted over with white paint. Finally, the remaining stencil was pulled off of the wall, completing the mural. This approach allowed me to maintain the sharp precision of the generated design, even at the scale of a large mural: approximately 12 feet wide and 30 feet tall (3.6m x 9m).

Time-lapse Video

Check out the time-lapse video of the entire 4.5 day process!

DO YOU LOVE PUBLIC ART?

I believe public artwork is extremely beneficial and I get a lot of joy from creating it. If you are aware of an opportunity for a new mural in a public space, please reach out to studio@tylerxhobbs.com and let me know.