Bohemian homesless or BOHO is a style mainly in fashion that was popularize around early millennium. It embodies colourful striking colours with patterns and flowers that made up the feel of tranquil and beauty nature.

Daydreamers is a cafe located in Sri Hartamas that was newly opened in February 2020. The most captivating element of the cafe when i first stepped into the place was the lush greeneries with mini Arabian style lamps hanging from trees all over the place giving a sense of tranquility and natural serenity.

They even put bettas (fighting fishes) in large jars and containers all around the cafes to bring in life to the environment.

A clever thought that i personally have never heard of. Bettas are low maintenance, tough and easy to take care of. Overall, The environment feels calm, peaceful with an acoustic music playing in the background allowing their patrons to be at comfort and at bliss.

So as to stay coherent with our client’s vision, we are to deliver the last important element to complete the Boho themed cafe: Boho art. Sheerin, the owner of the place had a strong vision of her cafe prior engaging with us. This is what a good mural client has, a crystal clear vision of how the mural would come to life. She shows us a series of photos and images and highlighted in detail what she requires. Her requirements are as follow:

• Flowers
• 4 major colours commonly found in Boho art.
• Heavy Boho influenced patterns
• Balloons – She loves balloons
• Crescent shaped moon

The design team took a day to study the origins of Boho and its related historical uprising while capturing its essence to deliver the following artwork. A large betta was added into the artwork among the flowers to ride the elements of the cafe, giving life to the artwork as well. All flowers depicted in this image is of familiar traits of real flowers but imaginary. Mild shading is added to give layers to the artwork elements.

Mural superimposed on cafe wall

Betta (Fighting Fish) – Notice how the light flows along the fins. We also shade the tail so it looks layered among each other.

Flowers as a feature wall and cake background.

Floras are sprout across to the other side of the wall. This is a strict request of the client to function as a value strengthening element for her cakes as a whole – A marvelous result from clear thinking and vision. Her cake products are now much enticing and sophisticated which helps to justify the price.

A heart shaped vine was hidden in the image as a decorative background for audience who are sitting there. Perfect for having an instagram photo with.

The mural act as an attention seeker. Passby-ers gets caught in attention by their cakes and amazing product presentation.

 

Boho-styled balloons

Sheerin the owner had a love for balloons in their boho-style. She wanted us to translate her artistic vision on to a carpark air well right outside her Cafe.

The air well alone was dirty and moldy. Having a wall like that next to a cafe may affect her business. The other challenge is, the wall is only approximately 3m (L) x 2m (H). With a limited area, the mural’s impression would not be able to leverage on a sheer size effect as compared to other murals that strive to standout because of it’s colossal size.

The Caveman designing team took all this into consideration and came up with this draft. As you can see, all elements below have been taken into consideration upon the mural.

• 4 major colours commonly found in Boho art.
• Heavy Boho influenced patterns
• Balloons – She loves balloons
• Crescent shaped moon

Initially the artwork was decided to be of 2D effects as imitated from another mural art. However due to the wall size, if this mural were to stand out, 2D would not be an effective method. We all decided to paint with realism instead. The idea now is to paint balloons so real, it will be as if when a person stands next to it, he/she would be holding on to balloons in the picture.

The biggest challenge for this mural in a realism standpoint is the lighting and shadow. Depending on the sunlight position of the wall, where would sunlight most likely hit the balloon from and how would the shadows lay upon each balloon stacked upon another? Without physical balloons, it was really difficult to imagine the outcome of the balloon’s shadow. After determining the sunlight source and direction, we started to paint the coloured balloons first. Colour toning of the balloons were added subsequently. Time taken to execute works to this point is approximately about 30 minutes only. It will then take the artist another 8 hours is to paint and correct the shadows only from each balloons to deliver the effects as shown below.

Shadow rule of thumb – The nearer the object to the surface, the shaper the shadow – The further the object, the more blur the shadow becomes projected upon the surface.

Sunlight source dictates the parallel shadow lines of the balloons to form a unified shadow drop effect.

Once the shadows are completed, Boho patterns are inked upon the completed balloon surface. Although it may look trivial, The Boho patterns are responsible for the shape formation of the balloon to make it look realistic.

Notice how the Boho patterns are curved along the surface curvature of the balloons to form its oval round dimension. Light distort the colours on the balloon.

The moon crescent was a representation of their cafe’s logo (a girl sitting on the moon in the shape of a crescent.) and have all balloons tied on it with a cute little ribbon.

Initially, the audience who wants to engage with the moon crescent would look as if they are sitting on the moon crescent like the girl in the cafe’s logo. However, we advised our client to adopt a soft string that curves down to accommodate for any audience who prefer standing while holding on to the balloons. The balloon’s strings are curved to support both standing and sitting positions of the audience. A perfect marriage between both worlds.

A complete look of the Boho-inspired balloons mural tied to a crescent shaped moon

The cat and the mouse.

Sheerin the owner was so satisfied with our work, she decided to add another small addition of mural to her cafe’s receptionist’s window.

Initially this window is just a white blank piece of wood that is built in to allow quick access from the cashier or kitchen to the waiter to serve their customers outside. There were intentions to make this part of the cafe more interesting since it presents itself directly to passby-ers and customers.

A day before opening while the artist was completing the balloons mural outside, there was a large hassle coming from the kitchen. A mouse have infiltrated the kitchen and the whole kitchen crew was trying to catch the mouse.

This was when inspiration came to Sheerin again. She decided to commemorate this event by having an image of her house cat ‘Nala’ and a mouse drawn on the window. Nala’s role is to look after and watch over the cafe for vermins (bad omens) while the mouse was to look as if it is trying to go after the cafe’s delicious coffee. Both entities will not be seen by each other and forever playing a hide and seek game with each other. Nala is to be painted on the panel with painted window frames.

Initially we only painted the window frame blue in colour to represent a glass window however it was ugly and not inspiring enough. We also decided in the client’s interest with her style, we proposed to her to paint her window frame with a background inspired by Vincent Van Gogh’s Starry Night painting.

Sheerin spent a moment with Nala her cat and finally capture the perfect angle of her cat and sent it to us. Her cat is now part of the Vincent Van Gogh window.

Nala the Bengal cat

On the other side of the window panel, there’s where we painted a mischievous mouse hanging on the window frame with its feet holding on to a cup of spilling coffee.

We manage to capture the whiskers correctly

 

Mouse’s fur detailed

 

Nala and the mouse are now forever immortalized as part of the Cafe’s opening history. Forever hiding and seeking. Forever watching over, forever fun and playful.

Tom on the lookout for Jerry

Finally, a poem was added on the left side of the panel which Sheerin loves dearly. It resonates with her initial mission to open her cafe and named it ‘Day dreamers’.

The poem goes like this.

And this is how a beautiful cafe with great coffee and food is born. With the murals around, passby-er’s attention to the business has skyrocketed. As of the moment writing this, her Cafe’s business have blossom in a matter of days! This is what every cafe owner would wish of.

If you would like to visit Daydreamers Cafe, do check them out at Sri Hartamas. (Next to Bodhi Sense Massage Therapy. The same lane as Rubberduck cafe.) You will not missed the Cafe due to its entire green environment.

Lessons and important takeaways of a Cafe’s mural

Have crystal clear vision

Sheerin the business owner is one of the few clients who have a clear business direction and theme for her cafe. Much of what you seen is actually her artistic view and the Caveman team so happen was her artistic hands to deliver the mural to reality. It is very easy for an artist to go astray from the main goal due to artistic clouds so it is even more imperative for the client to be their own captain of their ship to direct their environment to the right destination.

Shadow and toning matters (a lot!)

Just remember to insist on shadows. A lot of mural artist skips this part as this is the hardest to do on a mural. Every artwork with a good perspective embodies good shadows and tonings. Even Stencils (black and white image) has shadows being apart of their structure. Do not get lazy, draw some shadows!

Envision multiple scenarios

Most artist only wish to paint beautiful pictures without truly understanding why their painting/mural should exist in the first place. Especially into engaging murals (murals that co-exist better with the presence of an audience), there should be multiple ways a mural can engage with their audience. Do not get fixated with one scenario, get creative and explore multiple possibilities!

Have a great story

Every cafe is a business. And like every business, it needs good marketing (especially for cafes in general). The essence of marketing is word of mouth. In a cafe’s standpoint, a good marketing method can be through good food recommendation and in Daydreamers’s case study, it can be about their environment or simply founding stories of Nala the cat and mouse. In the age of social media, story still prevails as the number one factor for word of mouth. It allows for conversation between customers or from cafe owners to their customers. It provides content for foodies and social media content creators to write about your business for you and their audience. You do not need to have impressive big momentous founding stories to constitute a word of mouth, just have a great story like Nala the cat and the mouse.

 

We hope this write up will serve future cafe owners well into getting a great mural for their businesses. The Caveman team wishes you and your business the best. We would also like to wish all the best to Daydreamers Cafe and Sheerin for their business and finally, thanks for having us.

 

If you do have any inquiries of murals for your cafe and you think we may be able to help you, do reach out to us at the following:

Han

0166850069

kumpenghan@gmail.com