‘Not something that’s taught in school’: Calgary artist hosts mural training camps

A local artist who learned to paint murals through trial and error is sharing that knowledge with a seven-day camp.

A Canadian muralist is helping inspire others to try their hand at large-scale art projects by hosting mural training camps.

Sydonne Warren has many murals all over Calgary, and is sharing her tips and tricks with eager trainees.

“I’ve been doing portrait workshops for years, and then I thought, ‘What if I was able to help people to do murals?’” she said.

“This is not something that’s taught in school, and it is something that you actually need to try in order to figure out your techniques. A lot of people don’t know how to scale up something small into something really large.”

Warren says attendees learn every aspect of mural creation from site preparation, material selection, scaling and transfer techniques to effective painting methods and how to navigate contracts and professional practices.

Warren makes sure the artists have a plan in place before they start a project, and then teaches them how to transfer that idea from small to mural size.

Those who signed up for her most-recent seven-day workshop ranged in age from 18 to in their 60s. One was from from Edmonton and the rest were from Calgary.

They each had a week to finish their murals indoors on wall space at SpanicArts.

“Scaling up was the biggest thing that I wanted to learn how to do,” said Erica Hansen, an artist and landscape architect who signed up for the workshop. “It’s always fascinated me, and I had no idea how to do it.”

“It was really nice meeting everyone. Everyone has like their own unique style and were from all different walks of life, but everyone was an artist, so it was it was really interesting, it was really nice to connect and meet other artists.”

Colombian artist and SpanicArts founder Fredy Rivas was another of the artists who signed up for the training camp.

He says he was surprised at how different it was to paint on such a large scale.

The 15 completed murals can be seen at SpanicArts from 3 to 6 p.m. on Jan. 25, 26, Feb 1 and 2.

The next mural workshop takes place in May.

For more information you can visit Warren‘s website.