From cave painting and Pompeian houses to the wallpaper scenery of a quarter-century ago, murals have come and gone from the home. These two books are evidence of a recent resurgence. Marvelous Murals is a good, straightforward manual for mountain scenes, woodlands, waterfalls, musical themes, underwater motifs, and farm scenes. Beginners will appreciate the progressive difficulty of the exercises, starting with room preparation and simple silhouettes and advancing to complex textures and perspectives. In Trompe l'Oeil Murals Using Stencils, Royals hopes to make it possible for the novice to achieve the heightened reality of the genre using the simplest of tools and methods. She begins with preliminary tryouts and small-scale projects for faux surfaces, like used brick, stone blocks, velvet drapery, and marble. Six major projects take on arched brick windows, lattice windows, limestone niches, etc. Both of these books are recommended for crafts collections. More advanced artists will also want Sarah Hocombe's challenging Fresco Painting for Home & Garden (LJ 7/99). From Booklist
It's not quite the same as paint by numbers--artists Lord and Schmidt tend to instruct readers in more general terms--but it'll net a similar effect: a uniform and realistic trompe l'oeil or mural that enhances any room. Much of their narrative is strictly common sense: protect the room before prepping walls; add 10 to 20 percent water to paint in the spray gun; and get a good grasp on color theory and perspective before mixing colors. Their 15 projects progress from the simple to the more complex, from silhouettes of Venetian boatmen to a panoramic landscape; each features the requisite list of materials as well as step-by-step close-ups of critical spaces. A sprayed sky, for instance, begins with applying a basecoat on the wall, laying in and sponging clouds, and from there adding and subtracting and blending to create highlights and shadows. Nothing's out of the box here, but sure and steady will win a place in the home. Barbara Jacobs

 

Guest should register an account Register