The Making of Mirage
The process of painting a mural wallpaper.
Mirage, designed and painted by Diane Hill and Joanna Charlotte exclusively for Osborne & Little
Nearly two years in the making, I am very happy to finally share with you this fantastic collaboration with myself, Diane Hill and Osborne & Little. Presenting ‘Mirage’, a paradise garden, where a red Ibis walks in a shallow pool watched on by cranes and exotic birds within the trees and foliage.
The original design has an ivory background and is also available printed on a grasscloth. Further colourways include backdrops reflecting the time of day; the cool light pre-dawn, soft blush tones at sunrise, and twilight blues.
I have always had a love for interior design and decorative art as well as fine art painting so a few years ago I decided to merge all three and move my art practice over to wallpapers. I feel very fortunate to launch this endeavor with a collaboration with two such great names in the industry.
Diane Hill and I became insta-friends about four or five years ago bonding over a shared love of chinoiserie and all things beautiful. Diane invited me to work with her on a few small projects over the years and we quickly realised how well our individual styles of painting blended together. In 2019 I began discussing ideas for a wallpaper mural with Osborne & Little and saw the perfect opportunity to bring Diane in on the collaboration. The brief from Osborne & Little was a fresh and colourful exotic fantasy scenic. In this blog I want to share some of the process and behind the scenes photos of what goes in to creating a mural.
STEP ONE: Sketch out some potential compositions. Once we had a few different ideas down on paper, Diane and I headed into London for a meeting with the design team at Osborne & Little. During the meeting we edited and refined the ideas making notes on the sketches.
STEP TWO: Once we had all agreed on the amendments I painted a miniature watercolour rendering.
STEP THREE: Scale up the design. This is done by projecting the colour rendering on to the wallpaper. It is painted full size, three 70cm wide, 300cm drops. Diane started the process as she was painting the lush foliage, leaving spaces for the birds which I was to paint.
STEP FOUR: Next it was over to me. I had a fantastic array of colourful and exotic birds to paint. I started with the scarlet ibis.
The pair of Demoiselle cranes are situated across a join so I opted to paint them on a separate sheet and they were slotted in digitally after scanning. Once I had finished painting the birds, I packaged up all our hard work and sent it off to Osborne & Little where they worked their magic in putting it all together and creating the different colourways. So there you have it, a little insight in to the process of making a mural wallpaper.
Need some ideas on how to use Mirage in your interior? I’ve had a bit of fun making up some schemes…
