The Fish Box, Dingle
Micháel Flannery from The Fish Box, Dingle put up an advertisement, looking for someone to do a mural for them in the new space they were creating for customers. I got in touch with Micháel and showed him my work and we almost immediately began to brainstorm.
Micháel sent me on some references for ideas that he liked the look of and I went through a list of items that he wanted to be included within the mural. Once we had put together a nice framework of ideas, I got to work on the digital sketches.
The Fish Box, has their own trawler which they use to bring fresh fish into their restaurant every day. This was to be the central focus of the mural, along with the variety and quality of the fish that they use.
Sketchwork
In my original designs there wasn’t enough focus on the trawler itself and Micháel also explained to me how his restaurant was more than just a fish and chip takeaway, and how he wanted to get that across to his customers.
Micháel was looking for a more “mature/sophisticated” design. So I reworked what I had, using his logos as reference, now making the mascot for the mural a monkfish.
I simplied the design to resemble the sharp stecil-like/flat colour work used on old-school food brandings. I minimilised the colours to a marine colour palette, using the bright orange and contrasting blue to really make the whole mural pop.
Micháel main aim was to have a mural that was instagrammable, so I added in an empty fishing rod and speech bubble to give customers something fun to interact with in the mural and let everyone looking at their photos know, where the picture was taken.
Getting Started!
After the the main ideas were drawn up and approved, I sent Micháel the colour list for the paints which he did an excellent job of sourcing. The colours he found were almost exactly the same as the original design if not better.
With the main concept polished up nicely, and the paints bought, I got started on the painting process. Everything changes in this process when you finally get to work with the wall itself. You see what really works and what doesn’t. I knew immediately that I had to make all of the sea creatures far larger if I wanted them to be noticed.
After a few coats of the base layer colours the mural really came together nicely. However, myself and Micháel both agreed that the image could be brought even further again than the original concept. And so, I spent an extra day doing some line work on the mural and cleaning up the overall piece to bring it to a whole other level again.
I had a blast! The polishing stage is definitely my favourite part. All the hard work is done, now I just get to focus on bringing the whole thing to life.
Thank you!
I have to say thank you to Micháel and to everyone who works at The Fish Box, Dingle. It was an absolute pleasure to work with everyone of you. An absolute joy.
It was so easy to work alongside Micháel bringing this mural into fruition. With his keen eye for design and ability to see and understand where a project is going made getting through this project a lot of fun and brought so much more life to the whole process.
I was always greeted with a smile and always felt welcome arriving in each day to work on this piece.
I wish you all the best in the future and I will definitely be be back for some more of your incredible food!
Sláinte!
