Miguel Brambila

The World's Largest Mural

The World’s Largest Mural

BY MIGUEL BRAMBILA

Artist, Social Services

Texas, USA

This artist details his process, technical and philosophical, to create and understand his piece Trova.

In Trova, created by Miguel Brambila in the app “Layers”, the trovador pours his heart out in every stanza and breaks himself into little pieces, visually and figuratively, trying to express the beauty of poetry and music.

Step1

The first image is the outline of the composition drawn in the app “Layers” with a thin black brush at 100 percent opacity on a transparent first layer. This visual concept is the same if you are painting a mural on a wall or a painting on your mobile device.

Step 2

I create a second layer filled with a solid brown background, which is then placed below the outline layer.

Step 3

Now that I have the outline, I can start to fill in the final colors of the composition on the third layer.

“Layers” was the app chosen for this painting because of its easy user interface to work with multiple layers, the option to email as a psd file, and the option to export a large file size through the “Layers” desktop interface. The app’s thin brushes allowed me to create the lines that compose the broken trovador and his guitar.

Step 4

The remaining colors are painted in and, in some cases, slightly shadowed for the feeling of dimension. The guitar strings, hair, and signature are added as the final touches, using the finest brushes. Painting the guitar strings in straight lines was the biggest challenge of the piece.