Anastasia Belous

Flying High - Late Mural in Odessa

In September 2018 I was invited to paint the wall in the new residential complex in Odessa called ArtVille, which is located very near the famous market 7 kilometre. This wall took 7 days to complete and is called “Close Dreams”. It shows the young girl being happily flying on the swing followed by the tail of flowers. She is young, jolly and the bright future is ahead of her - this is the image that both me and the client wished to create promoting the credos of the new residential complex being built.

The girl is not a fictional character and the main challenge here was to capture portrait features on such a large scale. Additionally it was difficult to work on the south side of the building under the burning sun, with it reflecting off the freshly painted white wall adding to the challenging painting process.

This project has received quite good coverage in the local and national media, thanks to the work itself, the residential village pr team, the famous location of the wall, and the recent wave of fashion for murals in Ukraine. 



The Largest Wall

In June 2018 I have been invited by the Elite Tennis Club - great place just outside of Odessa where champions train, to paint a themed mural - featuring the seascape and tennis player. 

The wall was 28 metres high and the largest canvas I have ever worked on. 

What I have learned? The tennis player has to be pictured having correct technique of serving the ball - something the artist in me have overlooked while thinking about the image in the sketch stage prioritising aesthetics to the technique. So we have changed the tennis player two times already in the process of painting the mural, and to everybody’s joy - we have selected the local tennis champion and trainer in the club to be the model for the wall. Here my portrait skills didn’t let me down and he is now a local celebrity with everybody having recognised the model even from the back on the mural.

I was very happy to have been invited to do this project, and have learned new challenges of working with large walls. It is physically exhausting - I work both with exterior paints and spray paints, and covering large part of the wall to in single colour can give you stronger triceps. And bring you free tennis lessons along the way :) 


Working with curved walls

This summer I was lucky to be working on the mural design of the parking space at the IQ Business Centre in my hometown of Kiev. We decided to go with the flow of the name of the centre and I have set my interest in the highly intellectual art of Origami - traditional Japanese figure making from paper. The more complex figures indeed require perseverance and forward-looking thinking - this concept was welcomed for the mural by the owners of the business centre. So the work began.

I was working with plain concrete grey wall and the curvature of the decent and ascent of the parking. 

First, I decided to break the plain surface of the wall visually in geometrical patterns - creating high and lows of pyramids using the base grey colour of the asphalt already presented in the space. The peaks of these pyramids were thereafter highlighted with silver, creating an interesting ‘live’ effect while the car is moving downwards or upwards.

Finally, the chosen origami figures were set on top of this geometrical pattern with certain regularity - creating a rhythm in the space. The origami figures were chosen to be made of the light green colour - one of the corporate colours of the IQ Business Centre.

The project altogether took with breaks around 3 weeks, mainly due to complexities of the space and the walls. 

It was the first time I been working with naked curved walls like this, and it was a very interesting and fulfilling experience. I would like to say many thanks to my dad and his wife in supporting me in this venture.

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