Tag: mural

Finishing the murals

Did you think I was going to leave you hanging as to how the Tanzania mural looked?

Customer called to say the cape buffalo needed about 1/2 hour of work. I was relieved to hear from him, because my final day working on them was without his expertise. I’ve never seen those animals, except in photos (and there was that one stuffed head staring at the back of my head while I painted).

So, I headed back down the hill one beautiful spring morning.

morning drive

He has a good eye and was very helpful.

Before:

After:

Yes, the differences are subtle, but my goal is customer satisfaction.

Then, Customer looked at me and said, “You left something out of the other mural.”

I said, “Shoot. I was hoping you would forget.”

He just tapped the side of his head. Then he waited for me to tell him what he wanted, so I smiled and said, “Buzzards!”

Using masking tape torn into little pieces, I stuck some buzzards shapes up in the sky. We scooted them around and discussed relative sizes and shapes. Then, I painted them.

As usual, Customer was right:

This photo of the finished Tanzania mural isn’t the best because the morning sun comes through the window and overexposes the one side. However, this photo beats the one with the scaffolding in front, and the slightly wonky buffalo.

Can you pick out the buzzards in the Missouri mural? Tiny, but they add the right finishing touch. This mural keeps amazing me, because the photo was so meh.

On the way home, I couldn’t just blow past Dry Creek Drive, knowing it was just filthy with poppies and lupine.

Mural #2, Day Three

I may have mentioned that February is my favorite month a couple of times. It still is, in spite of the fact that on this date, 16 years ago, my dad died. Weird. I didn’t think I could make it a week without him around, and now it has been 16 years.

Every morning as I head down the hill to work on the mural, I check out the view. There is a wide turnout with a great view up the canyon, and on some mornings, it is fabulous.

About 2 miles from the mural site there is a stunning field of mustard.

Across the street from the mustard is an old olive grove that my dad owned. (I wonder if Dad would have let all those suckers grow on the base of the trees.) It is a beautiful grove, and I expect it to be torn down for houses in the next handful of years.

Okay, let’s tackle some Tanzanian trees and shrubs and sand and grasses.

I enlarged the photo on my computer screen and then made some little sketches of the different shapes of the trees. It was helpful. Customer was pleased with my progress.

Then, I had to face that herd of cape buffalo. I tried enlarging the photo on my computer, but it was too pixelated. I worked and thought and studied and worked some more.

If I can’t see a thing, it is very hard to paint the thing. One of Customer’s people showed up to relocate the scaffolding for me, and I was relieved to move back to the tree.

To use one of the most overused cliches, “at the end of the day”, this is what I had. Customer said it looks as if Dracula will be coming out of the sky.

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Mural #2, Day Two

A guy showed up this a.m. to move the scaffolding out of the way. I drew the base of the tree. Then I redrew it further to the left.

Are you wondering, “What tree??” Just hold on. . .

Then I began painting the distant trees.

A little ground work, more greenery in the distance, and some delineation on the base of the tree.

Another working lunch.

Time to put in a hint of cape buffalo. Customer came by and said the tree was too short – duh. That’s the highest I can reach from the floor! He thought the buffalo were the right size for the location.

I told Customer that it would be helpful if I could see the tree in person. I need to touch it so I can tell the texture. He contemplated having someone chop one down and shipping it here, but quickly abandoned that idea when we began discussing the age. Baobabs are probably as old or even older than our sequoias. He said the bark is smooth.

This is how it looked at the end of another day. Maybe I can finish the lower half tomorrow, and then get the scaffolding back in place at a lower level than before to ~~grow~~ paint the tree.

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Mural #2, Day One

It isn’t often that I get to paint 2 murals in the same location. This is one of those rare times. Customer chose his scene, using photographs he took in Tanzania.

indoor mural #2

That’s a herd of cape buffalo. Later he requested a crocodile between the water and the buff.

The logistics are tricky with that bed of rocks, including a boulder.

First steps are the same: tap off the wood, drop a chalk line in the center, get it drawn. Oops, lay out some plastic to protect the floor and the rocks!

Customer has people. Two of his people first placed, then moved the scaffolding to put down the plastic. Nice. While they did that, I mixed paint colors. There wasn’t really anything that needed to be drawn with the sky, so I just dove right in.

Lots of climbing up and down off the scaffolding.

This is the photo I’m working from for the sky. That is the top of Customer’s hat on the bottom left. There is more sky, but I am protecting Customer’s identity and privacy.

Hmmm, needs work, but it is a good start.

Keep painting. Lots of climbing. Stand back, study the shapes, the colors and memorize what to address when you climb back up. Oops, can’t recognize the shapes while on the scaffolding, climb back down and study it again.

At this point, I felt like calling it a day. Alas, it is 22 miles from home, and I am giving myself a tight deadline. Besides, it would be good to not need the scaffolding for Day #2, so I found some internal fortitude and started the tops of the trees and shrubs.

This part will be slower. I was on the scaffolding when Customer showed up. Customer kept telling me to be careful. I kept responding that while I look awkward, I am just fine. We began discussing a few points of the mural, and I climbed down to show him the sketch. I became aware that he was wanting something else on the wall, so together we changed our minds. Bye-bye, green.

He was thinking I might get mad at him. No way! He is a delight to work for, and I want to paint something that he will love. He has expressed his love of the baobab trees over and over, so that’s what will go on the wall. No sketch this time.

Oh. I still have to paint cape buffalo. Oh boy.

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Mural, Finished!?!

From the last painting session photos, I made a list of things that the mural needed in order to be finished. It seemed like another day of painting should do the trick, but I never know. Sometimes the detail and fixing just goes on and on and on. . .

The ivy needed to be lightened, for sure. Better ivy leaf shapes, if the brushes were behaving. Here you can see that it shows up better than on the first layer.

It needed more dogwood, and Customer wanted the dead tree behind the building. I was thinking of another flowering dogwood, but it would make it a girly mural, and Customer is NOT girly. (As he said, “Nah. Too much pink.”)

There were some other fixes, too boring to show you. I thickened the ivy, detailed the grass, fixed the log on the ground, added detail to the fenceposts, trimmed up some trees, among other fiddly stuff. So, here it is, all finished!

Bummer. The bluebird is blurry. He was the cherry on top, the icing on the cake, the gravy, the best saved for last!

I rolled back the plastic to photograph this angle. The reason I wrapped the mural only part-way up has to do with the construction on the back side of the wall. There isn’t a good stopping place above the place where I stopped wrapping.

Sorry. That wasn’t helpful. Never mind. You’ll have to just trust my judgment. (The editor speaking here: Did you know “judgement” is also a correct spelling?)

Same thing from this angle.

There is a second mural to be painted in the same room. Stay tuned . . . it will be a week or so before that appears on the blog.

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Mural, Day Three

Since the sky is finished, I pulled the blue masking tape from the top. Then I reshaped the small window, widened the building a skosh on the right, filled in the posts with a first layer and then Customer came to say “Good Morning”. He had a smart aleck remark about the bluebird, so I offered to let him put some blue on it. He actually recoiled at the request, so I opened up a container of blue, dipped my finger in, and smeared a bit on the bluebird.

Then, I began the dogwood.

The dogwood tree puts out its blossoms before it leafs out, but this looked a bit twee with pink, white and blue together. So, I decided it needed to have some green; let’s call it another tree behind the dogwood.

I also began detailing the grasses at the bottom.

You can see there are grasses on the left and blurs on the right.

See?

When I photograph a painting, whether a mural or an oil painting, things that aren’t just right show up. This photo tells me that the shrub on the left needs another clump in the lower back, and the large tree behind the building needs a little work. And it says, “While you are at it, could I have a few dogwoods in the distance? Oh, and maybe another branch or two on the lower edge of the big dogwood?” Bossy-pants photo.

Customer came back at the magic 5 minutes in the late afternoon when the sun is exactly across the doorway of the old building. Then he suggested ivy growing on the front of the building, which I thought was a grand idea. I began it immediately, and complimented him on the addition. He said, “I’m not just a pretty face, you know”. Except, being from Missouri (which he pronounces “Missourah”), he said “purdy face”. We are really having fun getting acquainted as I paint.

Okay, everyone just calm down from the bossy photo, brilliant sunlight, funny pronunciations, and creeping ivy. This is how it looked when I closed up shop for the day.

The ivy needs more detail, more leaves and some stems. I’ll check out the ivy at home before beginning on Day Four. This photo also shows the grasses before detailing, along with the not-quite-finished log on the ground and very transparent and sketchy bluebird.

Stay tuned. . .

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New Mural!

All murals begin with a conversation. It moves into photos, measurements, and sketches. This conversation began in December at a man’s home in his events room. (No, I’ve never been in an events room at a private home before. . . have you?)

There are 2 walls under discussion. This is wall #1 as it appeared just before a Christmas party.

After some discussion, Customer chose a scene, which I sketched. He changed his mind, and sent me this photo of a place where his grandparents lived in Missouri until he was 5 years old.

P1000685

This was more familiar to me, and quite straightforward. I looked up Missouri and learned that the state tree is a flowering dogwood, cornus florida, and the state bird is the bluebird! (I LOVE bluebirds!) So, I sketched the scene, and Customer was happy.

Ed's mural #3

Two scaffolds were waiting for me, along with some heavy-duty plastic covering the floor and a very handy table.

Don’t you wish you had an events room at your house? I taped off the top wooden trim and dropped a chalk line in the center so I could have a point of reference and a sense of true vertical.

Then I had to move the scaffolds to draw the picture, a very simple scribble.

Starting is slow process. Every mural has its own set of challenges, most of which are logistical rather than artistical. (Sorry – just had to mess with that word to make it match “logistical”.) There is a special level of concern when working inside of someone’s home instead of outdoors. I procrastinated a bit by making corrections in a comforting shade of teal.

Time to put the scaffolds back in place and begin the sky. The photo’s sky was a very soft blue, which I made brighter. The whole photo is sort of dark, so I am aiming for brighter colors on everything.

I took a short break to enjoy the view and was thrilled to see Sawtooth out the windows. This is a very pretty part of Tulare County, and this is the most beautiful time of year.

Break’s over. Just paint. I feel a sense of urgency to finish and get my mess out of the events room so Customer and Mrs. Customer can resume their very interesting and active life!

mural Tulare county

New Year, New Challenge

I met a guy who likes my art. He is in an art related business, studied architecture and has similar ideas to mine about what makes good art. He told me that he has decided I am an “art-itect”. I understood the term immediately.

A few weeks ago he asked me to bid on a mural for a wall inside his business. We talked awhile about what he wanted, and I came up with ideas for him. Scenery, trees, sort of a tunnel feel, autumn type colors, light in the distance. . .

Then, he popped up with this “art-itect” thing. I should have sensed trouble coming. Instead, I felt flattered, and understood, and appreciated.

visalia granite

Oh my! This is what he wants painted on his wall!!

I’ll keep you posted.

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Mineral King Mural Re-do

The book The Cabins of Wilsonia may be in route to Three Rivers. Then again, it may not. Trust has been broken, so I am hearing the messages from the printer and the binder in the same sort of sound as the adult voices on Charlie Brown. Remember those?

Meanwhile, I am occupied with various tasks, all productive. I’d sort of rather sit and knit, or help my friend organize her closet or take a long walk, but the art world marches on, with or without my participation.

A new studio tour is scheduled for March of 2015. By “new”, I mean that different organizers are handing the arrangements. It is called South Valley Artists’ Studio Tour and will include lots of artists from lots of towns. Studio Tour used to be only Three Rivers; now Three Rivers is but a part of it.

The weather is mild, so I have spend some time refreshing the mural on my studio door. Here is the before and the middle. I know it needs more details, but need to wait for clarity and direction. It takes awhile to study one’s own work and see how to improve.

Sunshine is a wonderful thing. Like many wonderful things, too much of a good thing may cease to be so good. Sunshine fades paint, particularly the color yellow. This means greens turn to blue, oranges turn to red, and any brown that has yellow in it (they all do) goes either reddish or purple.

Here is the mural several years ago, a year when the leaves were brilliant in the fall:

Here it is prior to the recent refreshing. It kind of looks the same, so it probably has needed a do-over for a few years.

Here it is with new colors. I left the distant peaks the same so they would look distant. It might be too distant of a look. The rocks might be floating. There might not be enough detail in the foreground. It probably needs more work. And, I realized that I’ve never signed it. Perhaps I haven’t ever felt finished with the thing!

P.S. OF COURSE this is a Mineral King scene. . . were you expecting something else?

Mineral King mural mural

Orange You Glad This Mural is Finished?

A drive-by shooting of the Rocky Hill label mural on the east wall of Rocky Hill Antiques, east of Exeter.

This is how the mural looks in the morning light. It faces east, so I was only able to work on it when the shade was 2 feet wide, around 2 in the afternoon.

And, in case you have forgotten, it has a hidden item! No prizes offered, just the satisfaction of finding it.

Exeter murals mural oranges