The Numala Mural

History, Process and Techniques

The Brief

In July 2007 I was approached by St Albans Secondary College to produce a mural for Numala; the area behind the school gymnasium which has been planted with indigenous vegetation of the Western Basalt Plains. The Idea was to create a mural that represented the western plains in their original pristine state. This was project close to my heart for a few reasons. Firstly I live in the region and have been painting pictures of the creeks and plains for some time, with a particular emphasis on the remnant, the forgotten and the popular perception that it is a wasteland when in fact it is an area of incredible variety and beauty. Secondly, I have etched in my memory the vastness and colour of the plains from my childhood. I was born in England and my family emigrated when I was a small child. We firstly lived in Sunshine, and later East Keilor. In those days the suburbs were encroaching but sparse and my memory is filled with images of the huge sky, seemingly infinite horizon, brilliant light and golden, endless fields, so different to the orderly, close, green world I was born into.

The Numala area wall consists of a long stretch of wall divided into four large panels; each 5m x 4m, one of which has steps and a door into the gymnasium and another half panel around the corner on the northern side. The long wall faces southwest. In front of the wall a pond has been built as habitat for wetland plants and to encourage birds. The original plan was for students to create an urban graffiti style mural on the panel with the door, I would do a grassland mural on the two middle panels and the half panel around the corner with the theme of being a pristine wilderness at one end and encroaching suburbia at the other- next to the graffiti mural. The remaining panel was to be done later by local Aboriginal artists to tell the story of the local landscape from that perspective. The word Numala is a local Aboriginal word, meaning place of great natural beauty. 

Materials

For paint I decided that the best option would be to use quality outdoor, acrylic, water-based housepaint, as it would be reasonably weatherproof and last for ten years or so. I got a large quantity of white and creamy yellow (Naples yellow) to use as a base and 12 different pure pigments so I could mix my own colours. I used blue, yellow, red, purple, green and earth tones: yellow ochre, red oxide and raw umber.  For dark colours, which I like to be transparent to some extent, I used pure pigments mixed with a binder. I started using PVA glue as a binder but I found it unsatisfactory as it tends to clog on the brush and go a bit flaky as it dries so I soon switched to a quality acrylic impasto medium that is highly adhesive and easily worked. I used a variety of brushes including rollers, broad “housepainting” style brushes, round and flat teklon brushes, and, a personal favourite, fan shaped bristle brushes for blending colours into each other and for dabbing on “grass”. The whole thing was sealed with anti-graffiti varnish to aid durability and to minimize the effects of vandalisation should it occur.

The Panels

In early August 2007 I started work on the two central panels of the long wall. My Idea was to use as much of the natural setting as I could. From the path laid I the garden there are two or three natural viewing points, so making a note of where these are, and with the help of a couple of students I drew in the horizon line to match the natural one which you can see beyond the buildings. I felt that this would help the mural sit into the landscape. Then, also with the help of the students I painted the top half blue and the bottom half red-orange. The idea behind this is to create a sense of depth through the interplay of cool and warm colours. Cool colours tend to recede into the distance and warm ones come towards you. I used this natural phenomenon extensively throughout the creation of the mural. In nature, as things get further away, their natural colour gets paler, grayer and cooler; as they get closer colours become more intense, darker and warmer.  Next I worked on the left central panel for some weeks. I drew in a creek so that it would appear to flow into the pond, and, starting from the horizon drew in some hills and hundreds of thin horizontal lines in pale yellow, purple and green in order to start pushing the horizon back into the distance. The lower end of the sky was done with a pale mixture of blue and yellow to also create the sense of depth. 

A word on the skies; in the initial blue-ing of the skies I sketched in with the roller a rough sky using basic blue and white. This was satisfactory for a start but as the picture progressed it became apparent that the blue was too cool and too blue so some weeks later I redid all the skies and clouds in warmer colours which instantly made the paintings brighter.

There was quite a learning process involved with working on such a large scale. In the beginning I would paint something detailed, step back to the viewing points and be unable to see it. As time went on I worked out the scale that I would have to paint things, which would usually mean starting with a huge splotch of paint and working it about a bit. As time went on and I worked out how to do things the process became quicker too, so that by the time it came to do the last panel I was able to do it in a sort of painting shorthand, and what had taken weeks in the other panels took a matter of days. 

The left centre panel progressed nicely. I laid down the distant landscape, the creek, and a couple of large trees. I roughly copied the yellow gum in the garden to give a sense of continuity and I added detail after detail: animals, plants and birds. I started in earnest on the right centre panel, doing the same “distance” technique and sketching in houses and a concrete drain on the right hand side for the “encroaching urban” theme. But it wasn’t working. The horizon became confused and unclear and it all looked a bit naff. So one morning I painted over the houses and turned them into distant hills and after a bit of inspired input from Marion and Theo, the concrete drain became a dry stone wall. The houses reappeared but much smaller and I populated the area between the houses and the stone wall with weeds i.e., thistles. I felt this was more evocative as it speaks of recent history (the houses), more distant history (the stone wall- also symbolic of a sharp division in time i.e. the arrival of Europeans), elements of colonization and change (thistles) and the original landscape off to the left. I had one more problem to solve in this panel, which was defining the middle distance in the original landscape. I had to travel to Port Fairy around this time and I went and returned by different route and observed a lot of the Western Plains in the process. One thing that struck me was the way that trees seem to float above the plain- an illusion created by their trunks being slightly hidden by the grass. That was it, problem solved by a lot of floaty trees! 

Another thing I was particularly pleased with was the bottom edge of both of these panels. The garden is mulched right up to the wall. By copying the mulch onto the wall it creates the illusion that the mulch continues into the wall. From a distance this illusion is particularly effective. 

Around this time I started work on the “Around the Corner” half panel. On the walk into the garden you pass through a grove of trees outside the gymnasium. I decide to attempt to capture this so I used the distant horizon technique outlined above for a plain and distant hills, and in the foreground I did several large tree trunks and an impression of the underside of a leafy canopy at the top. I populated the picture with a sulphur-crested cockatoo, some quails and some red beetles that were crawling on the wall while I was painting it. You can’t ignore it when animals decide to model for you!

The issue of the final far left panel now presented itself. The original plan for Koori artists to do it fell through, so I went for it. Time was limited so I knew I couldn’t be as leisurely and detailed as I had been on the others, but I had the technique sorted out by now. I decided to continue the creek and do the escarpment in a more foreground manner. I would trail the creek off into the far left distance, but what about the sky? One thing I have always loved about the plains is seeing the towering cumulus clouds as a rainstorm edges its way towards you. So I went for that and a few more floaty trees, birds and animals. 

The Population

All the plants and animals that I put in the pictures are hopefully indicative of what was typical of the area in days gone by. Some, like the birds, insects, grasses and flowers, I was lucky enough to see in the garden and copy from life. Others I sourced from books or observation at other localities in the area like Iramoo and driving in the country. Some I drew from photos, though often I could not find the exact species in books so I would have to interpret. For example, I knew there used to be bandicoots in the grassland but I could only find photos of the rainforest species, and knew there were large dragon lizards but could only find photos of the East Gippsland species. I was true to life as I could be.

So now we are at the end of the project and I must say I’m a little sad that it’s over. This project has been one of the best jobs I’ve ever had and I’ve loved every minute of it- even painting away in a freezing Sou’wester wearing multiple layers of clothing, scarf and gloves, or a 40-degree stinker when the paint dries before you can get it onto the wall. So a big thank you to St Albans SC and in particular Marion, Theo and Nick.