Collective Arts Tap Room Mural
Collective Arts Brewery
The Brief
The Collective Arts Brewing building located at 207 Burlington St. East in Hamilton, Ontario, is decorated with numerous colourful murals by so many incredible artists, which falls in line with the core concept of the company being about marrying the founders' love of craft beer and art, and as a result they wished to expand the reach of the artwork to the front of the building where the tap room is located.
The building which is owned by the Port Authority of Hamilton was involved in choosing the theme of the illustration to be added to the front, so it was decided that an aquatic theme would be the direction that they would go with.
The Application
My role in the creation of the artwork for this project was in the creation of the concept from initial sketches to the final design and choice of colours.
From there, the application of the final design to the wall was done by a third party mural artist hired by Collective Arts.
Design Process
Working with Collective Arts Brewing as a client is a dream for an artist as there is allow a little more free-reign in terms of the creating concepts for a project. The style of my artwork in its most raw form can leave a lot to interpretation, as it can be very densely packed with little discoveries. But with this design, I had to keep it a little more tame because it was to be painted on to a brick wall which can be very time consuming.
Within the aquatic theme of the project, I had the idea off a tentacled creature being the focus of the design with a number of other aquatic entities nested within.
Those creatures were more impressionistic in nature, which fits with how I approach my work in terms of style. Sometimes it's more the feel of the piece that I'm trying to express than drawing a literal image of a fish or a shark so to speak.
The final design was based on a squid-like creature which may give the impression that it's reaching out to grab the other aquatic life in some way, but the calmness of those creatures may tell a similar to a school of fish just hanging out for a swim.
Tools: Pencil on paper, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator
