Help with a 6ft*4ft commision

[central]

Hi all. I might have landed a job to do a 6ft * 4ft painting for a two month year old baby girl's bedroom wall. Now my problem is that I suck at traditional painting so doing it that way is out of the question. So I'll have to work digitally in either photoshop or illustrator.

I just want to know if any of you have worked on pieces of this scale or bigger and how you approached it. Did you use photoshop exclusively? I tried to create the basic canvas in Photoshop and it was almost a GB in size! Did you stick to illustrator? Mix both? Would love links to digi artists who have done work of this scale just to understand what's involved cause this is totally new for me.

Thanks.

[Icelandic Norm]

How do you plan on outputting this? It's going to cost you a small fortune to print this, isn't it? And then do you plan on gluing it to the wall like wallpaper?

I would do it up to scale in whatever format you're comfortable doing and then transferring it to the wall somehow (tracing or projecting it). Keep the graphics simple and it shouldn't be that difficult to paint it.

[Grief]

yeah i'm a bit lost on the whole digital idea youre getting at.
i could foresee the possibility of printing onto canvas, or making a triptych of 3 2x4" prints on archival safe paper, but if you had largescale high quality printing capabilities chances are you wouldnt even have bothered with this thread.

i really don't know what type of client this is and if you worked up a project brief or some sort of contract (which you always should, even if its for a family or friend, which this project sounds like)... but i'd suggest asking them what they want before you get too in depth over shelling out a lot of money for a print job. is screenprinting directly onto the walls an option? or poly-plate lithography? what about airbrush? paper collage? chalk? charcoal? crud theres so many options. digital is merely the process, it is not the final form.

i did a few 56"x95" paintings awhile back, my sketchbook has a few images and i briefly talk about the process to create them. it may give you some ideas of how to tackle your project.

[daveneale]

I did a digital painting for my freind a year or two back that was this size....It was printed on archival high quality paper and framed, and ended up being at least £100 for the printing and another £200 for the framing as far as I remember (and that was at trade prices). I did it at 11024x4751 pixels and just kept merging layers...bu it still took forever to open/save. That was probably a little excessive size wise, you can probably get away with 72dpi max (thats what most printers work at at that size if I recal correctly). I guess it all comes down to what the fee is...if they can afford all the printing/framing costs your all good.

[creatix]

I got ya covered.

I work professionally in those sizes only. I don't go smaller than 4ft x 3ft and my typical sizes are around 60"x48". While your size is a tad larger, I can offer you my advice and experiences.

1. I work only digitally
2. My painting costs are quite high because I have an amazing printer and my printing costs are quite high. Its not so much as the printer but the size of the piece. I pay by the square foot. I pay hundreds just to have my pieces printed. However, they are printed on museum quality archival canvas and it is gallery wrapped and many of the artists that deal with my printer (myself included) feel that the prints are some of the best in the country. You get what you pay for sometimes. There is no need for additional framing (framing for large images can be really expensive) so my total costs to the customer aren't that bad.

I was asked to do a piece that was to cover a total space of about 20ft. For something like this, and you may want to consider this for yourself, you can try and panel the pieces out. Create one image at 3ftx2ft then another at the same size. Put em together but at least individually you are working with much smaller sizes.

In regards to file sizes, well...I have a pretty beefy machine exclusively for my work because not only do I work at around 10,000 x 9,000 pixels, I also work at 300dpi for the best quality prints. I am constantly messing around with 700mb+ to 1g file sizes. First off, anything painted (brush tool, eraser tool, etc) takes a month to process. Large broad strokes across the piece can take a while to work and its a very trying and painstaking process. I hardly use them. I create abstract art so if I work from photos they are typically my own. I always start at the highest source resolutions possible because when bringing almost anything into Photoshop at those resolutions, it will be small, and being a raster program it will obviously pixelate. I work almost exclusively in Photoshop but I have a handful of design elements that are brought over from Illustrator. Being vector, I can scale them to ridiculous sizes, that way when I bring them into Photoshop, I don't have to deal with resizing stuff. That should answer the whole Photoshop vs. Illustrator thing. I prefer Pshop because it lends itself better to my abstract needs but overall, when working at large sizes, Illustrator is incredible because you make things larger without changing the integrity of the work. I know for me, before I work on any pieces REALLY big I speak with my printer about it. There Giclee methods, their canvas and their efficiency dictates just how large I can go. If I told em I have some 7ft x 7ft painting to work with they would tell me to break it down into more manageable sections. Any files that is 2g in size is a bitch to work with. Thats the drawback digitally for me. Even my printer tells me that for my abstract style of art, 95% of his clients work traditionally. Not many people create digital abstract work at 60"+. Abstract is a great style to work with a traditional medium but I just like the feel of a digital piece followed up by gallery wrapped canvas. It kinda combines the 2 for me.

There isn't a great way that I have found around the slow working times. 1g file sizes are a pain to work with and even with my monitor I don't have the real estate to truly appreciate the composition of the piece. I work at around 12% of image size on a 30" screen.

As far as printing, your costs should be cheaper if its paper, even good paper. My stuff is Giclee printed on museum quality canvas as I've said earlier.

Overall, higher dpi should give you somewhat higher overall quality on the prints, but working in that size at high dpi is gonna be a bear to deal with. Everything is slow. It can be minutes for a single ctrl-s to save. The larger you go, the more materials it takes. Common sense there, so printing will cost more than your average 11x17 portfolio book type print.

Good luck with it though. Seeing a large piece is amazing and well worth it in the end (at least for me).

[Barts]

dang, just bite the bullet and do it traditionally

[Ilaekae]

My first question would be, "What the hell were you thinking?"

Since my first question is moot, have you thought about doing the piece as a digital at some handy size that won't drive you nuts to establish the piece and to make sure your client is happy, then project it to the larger size with a grid. From that point on, it's just duplicating the colors and shapes of your original. Not very exciting, but it gets the job done. To make life easier, limit the color palette (possibly) and work in vector to isolate the areas into areas of flat color. Convert the piece (as a copy) to a fine STROKE only version and project that onto your final surface at actual size. From that point on, it's just "paint-by-number" with the color version used as a color guide.

[arttorney]

Yeah. "Paneling out" and "grids" are the two main things I thought of besides the initial "What's the matter with traditional?" thing I had going on.

Even with high quality lumber and plenty of internal bracing you can stretch and prime a canvas of that size, museum wrapped, for a little over a hundred bucks. (how-to is somewhere in the depths of my sketchbook. Omit "size" step and use acrylic primer if you prefer to copy your piece out in acrylics rather than oil. I'd use acrylics if it was a commission piece due to the drying time and greater flexibility). Your program can probably supply a grid on the digital piece. A pencil, tape measure, and straightedge gives you the grid for the canvas. From there on out, it truly is paint by numbers. That's how those renaissance guys scaled up their pilot sketches.

[central]

Hey !

Thanks all for your responses. Ya I'm certainly thinking about working at a manageable digi size that won't fry my computer and then scaling it up with a grid. Thanks a lot for the help, really hope that I can get this job done.

Cheers one and all !

[chaosrocks]

just paint the sucker on the wall damnit. if leo can do it. so can you!

plus the advice above....

crx

[central]

Ok people, I need some more help. The reason I wanted to do this digitally from the start was because I've never actually painted traditionally before, save for some watercolours. So I need to ask you guys what would be the best media for a COMPLETE noob to do this in. Someone already mentioned acyrlics, would that be the best choice?
Any links you guys know that would help would be great too. As I mentioned I'm a complete noob. I don't even know if I have to treat the canvas with something before starting or not etc etc. As you can see the questions get noobier.

Any help would be great.

Later, Cheers. :)

[Flake]

Acrylics would be my choice, definitely. If you muck it up it'll be dry in 20 minutes and you can paint right over your mistake.

Beginners tip #1 - do not let acrylics dry on your brushes.

What will be the surface you're painting on?

Edit: Big acrylic thread..
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=101119

[Ilaekae]

Like Flake said...acrylics allow you a bit of leeway in making mistakes (quick repair time). Surface you paint on (if it's hopefully a textile of some kind) should be gessoed with an acrylic gesso. I would NOT paint directly on to a plaster wall unless you use standard latex household paints (which usually don't come in strong colors)--it will start to deteriorate within a few months/years...plaster needs to "breath" or it begins to rot from the inside into a calcified pile of dust.

Big suggestion. Measure the area where the art will be. If it's okay to do it as a "painting"--meaning stretched canvas with a frame--do it that way. If it's meant to be part of the wall, or cover the entire section of wall, do it on a cotton canvas with acrylics on a bigger-than-you-need set of stretchers (like 2x4s) and when you're finished, cut the canvas to size and "wallpaper" it to the wall with a good grade of wallpaper paste.

Patience is important here. Work slowly and carefully/accurately from your original digital piece with an accurately-drawn grid, as fine as you think you need. If your piece has a number of very strong or widespread color areas, get these in first, grid block by grid block. THEN go back and put in the more scattered elements and details once you have the main structure up.

[Gory]

Dunno, in my experience I've found some people pick up oil painting a lot better than acrylics... Oh, "my experience" and "some people" refers to myself.

[Flake]

Gory, oil would almost always be my medium of choice, but not if I was brand new to physical painting and had to make it stick hard to an unidentified surface on a paid job. Also, the baby girl nursery thing, I assume they'll want it dried and non smearable, non toxic, quick-style.

Edit: Central, with that in mind go search Gilleads threads, he's probably painted on every weird surface known to mankind by now.

[Blue]

I love oils, in fact I prefer them over anything else...but it is hell to paint with if you're new. You have to use japan drier if you want it to dry quick so you can paint over, or just wait 2 weeks to come back to it. But then japan drier can make the paint crack so you're screwed.

Really, acrylic is best for a beginner. Especially if this is your first shot at it. Oil takes a lot of practice on junky old canvas board before you know enough to start a piece of this size.

[central]

Hey people thanks for the replies. Think that pretty much covers it all. I not going to paint onto the wall directly, it's going to be on a canvas with a frame that's hung up.

Well, let me see how it goes...

Thanks one and all ... Cheers

[Barts]

you've never done any traditional at all??? i find that hard
to believe