My first travel job! ✈︎ First outdoor mural process and travel vlog
Intro
I painted a mural for a camp ground! I got in contact with Quinney’s Bush Camp through cold emailing and got the opportunity to fly to Nelson in South Island and paint these two murals for them.
Honestly, as soon as I got the job I got so scared. Where will i buy my stuff, how much of my own stuff can i bring with me. This is my first outdoor mural, how am i going to transfer the design?
But my motto in life is, “figure it out later”
I have put myself in many situations where i didn’t know how to do something, and I just tell myself that I will figure it out. it will work out. The outcome will be good.
So, while i had no clue how i was going to actually do the mural until i booked my flights and planned it, i just believed i could do it. then i did!
This video is going to go through the process from start to finish of this project. From how I got the client to flying to Nelson and painting the murals plus a bit from my travels
This was a project FULL of ups and downs and it was a real emotional rollercoaster, but I got through it! So, let’s begin
Finding the client
It started with an email.
I have been looking for holiday park/motel clients for a while. I thought it would be a great way to travel the country while also putting money back into the trip. I started by contact AirBnBs but got flagged on the system pretty quickly haha
So I pulled up trusty google maps and started looking for holiday parks. And while that is usually a great tactic for me, I found an even better method this time. An online directory of all the holiday parks in New Zealand. It’s literally holidayparks.co.nz
This was my first email to the client.
side note i am super pro-cold emailing. it has literally gotten all my career opportunities so i will be making a detailed video on cold emailing later.
I sent 175 emails and got 1 client. And that’s all I need.
Talking to client and quoting
When initially talking to the client, we discussed possible locations on site to paint a mural as well as discuss what the content of the mural would be. In our video call, the client mentioned he liked my Milford Sound piece and wanted something like that.
Side note again! Always include personal work in your portfolio
With a bit of back and forth and a video call later, I sent them a moodboard with the ideas we discussed. This contains my own work as well as work from other artists just as inspiration. I also included an estimate on the last page which gave the client two price options and lists all of my inclusions. As this was a travel job, I stated clearly to the client that my minimum would be $3000.
If the client has no idea of budget, giving them multiple price options allows them to have a cost choice while you also get to set your minimum. Often clients have little to no experience working with artists, so you setting the standard and giving your prices with options makes it less intimating for the client. And if your client wants to negotiate they can now see what would be a reasonable number would be.
The options I presented to the client were, 3 murals for $4000 or 2 murals for $3500. He decided to go with the latter.
Designing
So at this point the client has paid a 50% deposit, so i need to get drawing! This is the stage i procrastinate the most. I tell myself i’m letting the ideas ‘marinate’ but i’m just avoiding doing the work.
sometimes i will have to go to a cafe to focus on drawing for a solid hour.
live drawing intermission and talking
So now i have my 6 concepts, 3 for each site, i lay them out on a pdf and mock them up. This helps the client visualise while also protecting your artwork from theft. Unfortunately it can happen, so thats why i always mockup when i can and always put into a page on a pdf. NEVER send high quality artwork.
For the main mural, I definitely had to include a version of my Milford Sound piece. The client requested that I draw inspiration for their private lake which has a built in slide! That was the main inspiration for that site. The quote that the client settled on “Vacation Mode: Activated” was actually a ChatGPT phrase! I was needing some inspo, so I asked ChatGPT for short instagram captions for holiday haha
The second mural was very leafy as the client wanted to encourage guests to do a good job recycling.
Feedback
Now this kind of client is very rare. They chose a concept for each site and had no notes. I was literally in shock. We changed the colour palette of the recycling mural because the background was going to be a warm wood stain.
And that’s not like a feedback thing, it’s more like a “what do you think?”
Revision
I sent back revisions with better lettering and the colour palette change. The client was concerned about the orange, so I brightened that up so it would stand out against the wall. And now we’re good to go!
Prep for painting
Before flying off I printed out stencils of the reception mural on A0 plan paper.
For the recycling mural, I wanted to try the doodle method as it’s a simple design, so I think I can execute it well, even if I had to free hand it.
Prep for travel
I started bookings, flights, car and ferry for the trip. I also looked up where the hardware store is so I know where to buy paint.
I had the wise idea of bringing my whole family along so instead of flying directly to Nelson and driving 40 mins, we decided to fly to Wellington, take a 3 and a half hour ferry, and drive 2 and a half hours with screaming toddler. So much easier.
Travelling
We flew from Auckland to Wellington pretty late, since we had to wait for hubby to finish work. Got the Wellington at 10pm, got to the AirBnB and stayed for the night. Woke up at 5am because of the little gremlin and took the Ferry to Picton! This was a really lovely ride actually. A lot of people were telling us it was going to be so boring, and there’s a high risk of cancellation and breakdowns, but that didn’t happen to day. In fact it was quite nice. The water was calm, there was a lot to explore on the ferry and Ollie had a great time running around. The views were gorg! Freaking love South Island. Anywhere with mountains has my heart.
When we got to Picton we had a quick lunch before heading off to Bunnings to get my paintttt! After get a few colours mixed i realised i made a huge mistake by using so many colours.
We then drove 2 hours to Quinney’s, checked in and settled in our little caravan and cabin. The in-laws and baby got the cabin while Ben and I had a few cosy nights in the van together.
Painting prep
After we got all our stuff sorted, I set out to trace the first mural while it was still light and the sky was clear. I printed out these A0 plan sheets of the design, taped them together and ran coloured chalk all over the back of the paper. Have you ever used a cheque book or receipt book and writing on it gives you a copy? So it’s basically like that. We are creating a carbon/chalk copy and going over it with pencil so the design can transfer. This worked really well for this design.
Reception mural
Now for painting! The next day’s weather was NOT kind to me. It was super windy and started raining in the afternoon, but I pushed on because I did not want to be behind on schedule. The client was kind enough to put up a gazebo to protect me and the painting from the worst of the weather.
I really wish I had called up the Bunnings or something before hand so I can get an idea of their stock levels. For this job a 250ml sample tin would have done fine, but as it’s an outdoor mural I needed external paints and sample tins are typically for indoor use only. I had to purchase $400 worth of paints!!!!!! That is actually wild. So many of the colours were unavailable in smaller sizes due to the base colour availability.
If you don’t know what that means, let me try to explain, because I always get caught up in this myself. When you buy a can of paint the inside is a base colour. These come in a range of options, typically white, yellow, green and blue. There are probably more but you get the idea. When you get the colour mixed, the nice paint person will have a formula that adds pigments and shake it up. To get these darker colours, you start with a dark base. Unfortunately for me, they only had lots of these bases available in 1L cans. I just had to do it because the other Bunnings is like 2 hours away.
A number of things went wrong from this Bunnings trip actually. So not only did I have to spend extra because of the size availability, but two of the little cans they gave me for yellow, were actually oil based. As I’m painting the yellow, I keep thinking that it’s unusually thick, but maybe that’s because it’s an exterior paint? I haven’t painted outdoors before, so i guess it needs to be like stronger or something. But no. As soon as I go to rinse the brush i realise it’s oil and I have made a huge mistake by not double checking the cans. I didn’t want to buy turpentine and get all messy, so I kept the brush moist with some wet wipes in a zip lock bag and at the end of the mural I just threw the brush away. So sad. I love that brush. One of the yellows completely dried up in the can too, so at least I got a refund for that.
I checked the other cans and realise they didn’t mix the purple, it’s just the blue base ugh. I had to ask Ben to get me the purple, but guess what it was only in 1L
I also forgot to buy a pink, but I just decided to forget about it and do with what I have, since i have so many colours already.
Other than those initial hiccups, everything else went went for this mural. There wasn’t anything technically about the mural I was uncomfortable with so it came together really well!
I traced the lettering on after the sun was dry and it looked so good! So happy with how the lettering came out.
I also got bitten by SO MANY SANDFLIES at this mural. I eventually changed into long leggings and wore hubby’s socks to cover my skin. But I counted at least 20 bites, and they are way worse than mosquito bites. I kept waking through the night to itch them.
And bam! finished mural! I really appreciate the client going all on for this mural. They built this board from scratch and even planted trees and shrubs around it so when it matures it’ll all look so cohesive together. The tree stump is going to be turned into a chair so you can really get your vacation mode on.
Recycling mural
The next mural was painted towards the back of the park near the lake. This mural was to remind guests to please recycle properly.
I knew I wanted to transfer this design using the doodle grid because the design was pretty simple and I knew if the shapes were a bit skewed it wouldn’t be too bad. But a couple hiccups happened with this. The size of the site was a bit longer than anticipated, so I had to adjust the design a bit, space out the shapes and enlarge the type. I couldn’t do this uniformly because the width of the site was longer than anticipated while the height had been accounted for.
Drawing the doodles was quite fun. I just made a bunch of random shapes and illustrations. But it was a bit hard capturing the chalk marks and putting into procreate. My iPad photos were so low quality, I couldn’t really see the doodles. So I tried using my phone which was a little better but again not great. My phone is android and I had no more data, so i had to go back to the caravan to grab my husband’s phone, turn on on hotspot, and then send the photo to my ipad on messenger haha. Airdrop is the only thing that’s kinda making me want to get an iPhone, but I don’t want oneeee I was thinking of upgrading to a Samsung again in the future. But airdrop is literally so useful. I use it between my ipad and macbook. Side note* data is SO expensive in NZ, i pay $30 a month for 3GB. That’s one of the main reasons why I can’t wait to move back to Australia, because $40 can get me 80GB. Is it totally necessary? Maybe not, but running out of data is so annoying since a lot of communication is done through apps now instead of text.
So anyway, I’m trying to overlay the design onto the photos in procreate to see where to place the design. The idea is that instead of measuring and drawing grid lines, you can draw doodles, use procreate to overlay the design and you’ll be able to transfer design like that. So for example, the corner of the square goes just below the star and in between the leaf.
If you have experience with the doodle method on larger scale, please tell me how you did it! I’ve seen people use bits of painters tape too, so I might try that in the future.
The colour bases were taking agessss to dry. It was quite rainy and humid that day so I think that might have been why, but even in the morning it wasn’t fully cured. But I needed to finish it because I was leaving the next day. It was dry enough to touch, so I did another doodle grid over the top to line up my lettering.
Once I painted all the words, I realised that the paint was slipping off? Like it was literally sliding down. I still haven’t quite figured out why since the reception mural was fine. But i think it might have been a combination of humidity and the paint not curing, the two paints being different brands and that I painted the orange and green too thick? I decided to wipe off the paint and redo it in yellow as that seemed to stick to all the colours. It wasn’t ideal as the yellow didn’t pop as much, but it’s better than having the words slide off.
Another option I could have done was to sand back the areas for the lettering, but I didn’t have time to make a 2 hour round trip to Bunnings.
The pink was also being a slippery bugger, so I painted the leaves on the wood and kind of expanded the design while using the peach colour from the reception mural to add leaves inside the design.
Overall it turned out well. Maybe if i get asked to paint more murals around the park I will repaint the lettering to be white.
Reflections/travelling
After I finished both murals, my husband treated me to a lovely dinner in Nelson as a congratulations and also to thank the in-laws for doing so much with the baby.
I’m really proud of this job. Despite the hiccups, the murals turned out really well and the client loved them! My family was proud of me and got to see me do my thing!
I’m mostly proud of myself for putting myself out there and finding this client myself and putting in the effort to look for a remote client. And I got to do it in such an amazing place. I really wanted to find I could stay with, so a holiday park, motel or hotel and I got it! To grateful to God for this opportunity.
This just happens to be the city that my in-laws first moved to when they moved to NZ and so it kinda felt full circle to be giving them a reason to visit. They haven’t been here in 20 years so a lot has changed, they got to visit their old house and a lot of memories came back.
So I’m glad I got to be able to do that.
Should I have brought my whole family with a toddler on my first travel job, not sure but it was a fun experience regardless and we got to spend some time together exploring a bit of Wellington. I got free babysitting for a whole week so I think it was a big plus!
Here is the Wellington travel montage.
Outro
Thank you for watching this video! I still can’t believe I’m officially a travelling artist haha. If you have any questions please let me know in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer them! If you’re also a mural artist, please don’t comment on my painting technique, I already know. But if you have tips on art transfers, do tell!
Till the next video, bye!
