Happy first post of the new year!

In addition to shoveling snow at two houses here in Pittsburgh, I’ve been working on web sites since the holidays, many different web sites. Some of them are even mine!

As I mentioned last fall, I’ve finally gotten all of my digital pictures on one drive, design/build/finishing portfolio pictures going back to San Francisco 1996 (these were actually print pictures I digitized in a big batch 5 or 6 years ago). Sorting through old pictures on the computer is interesting because they only show age through technical specifications, not fading, dust or deterioration of the paper.

Anyway its allowed me to find original full resolution files and complete folders of pictures on jobs long buried away on a CD, and show lots of detail in the galleries that was unavailable on any of my earlier portfolio websites. There are hundreds of pictures useful for both technical instruction and design idea generation when it comes to faux painting and other decorative painting treatments, so I’ve really just gotten started with 50 or so pictures about a handful of jobs posted so far.

The most developed example so far is a kids playroom designed with a circus theme I painted in an historic San Diego home in 2008. This project incorporated both faux finish and trompe l’oeil mural techniques, and so I listed different pictures with commentary in those two different galleries.

I also put some design work samples from this project on the custom art gallery page. These pictures help illustrate how a project like this comes to be something out of nothing before anyone tears into your house with buckets and brushes.

I’m not usually so thrilled over the all the great free Wordpress themes out there.

They almost all require hacking up to do what I want them to do and to match options and capabilities with clients’ specifc needs and requests.

So given that I’m my own most critical client, I’m writing again today about this theme and the nice results it gives for my three portfolios I’m in the process of reassembling on this site. I’ve now posted seven entries/pictures on each of the three– a mural gallery, a selection of faux painting and custom textured, embedded and polished plaster finishes, and a portfolio of custom art projects, which includes scenic painting, chalk painting, public art and custom/commissioned paintings.

Here’s a screenshot of the navigation page for the custom art gallery, only the actual page is twice as big- I did hardly any customizing to make this blog perfect for me. It has a big beautiful pictures-first look on the single post/picture pages that I love, too.

Custom art portfolio screenshot

Moving from San Diego to Pittsburgh has left the usual upheaval in the details, and I’ve spent my six weeks in PGH (since finishing the vertical blinds mural in SD) working to un-overturn the cart, if you will: finding new business, new space in which to work, finding old stuff I need right now (“what f$%^ing box is that in?”), etc.

One of the repeating moments here that have given me a crispy new angle on things is presenting my work (meaning, mural painting, faux painting and my custom art portfolio) to people who have never heard of me before, and also to people who don’t use the web in the same way that Southern Californians (for the most part) do.

One of the crispiest edges that started screaming suddenly for my attention was the photo gallery I’ve been using since switching to WordPress– I hated it all of a sudden, and dreaded the thought of loading it with more pictures in organized fashion just to hate the output (small size, too difficult to hack their code and customize, irritating navigation, etc).

I have tons of pictures from the last 15 years of making art of all kinds professionally, and never liked the presentation of my chosen few, let alone all of the process b-sides which make for interesting research and reference materials.

I’ve used a few different photo galleries over the years (yes I have a Flickr account, but not so fond of its limitations for my work stuff), even had one made custom without really ever resolving the issue and became acutely aware of this here when directing people to the website and not getting the exact response I was looking for….

so over Thanksgiving weekend I found a solution that gives me what I want visually in the AutoFocus Theme for WordPress. It allows me to make better use of WordPress’ online marketing capabilities and make way better use of the hundreds of thousand of unusual pictures I have from my various wall mural, faux painting and custom art projects dating back to 1995.

immediately put into action in three new photo galleries, these new pages will be both more comprehensive and more specific at the same time while always growing with new, never before seen full resolution pictures from my archives (searchable, too)

so check out the simplified navigation bar in the header up above, and the even more simplified photo galleries of my wall mural, faux painting and custom art portfolio.

When I had the Firehouse studio open for the South Park Walkabout back on October 3, I met a lot of interesting people and answered a lot of questions.

One I remember best is the girl who asked me, looking at the mural laid out on the floor, “How do you see the the whole picture?”

I think she meant something like “how do you see this whole process develop before you start, when nothing exists yet?”, understanding that some kind of guiding vision is required to bring a project like this to fruition, even if she couldn’t articulate it that clearly. (She seemed smart enough, but alcohol does alter our ability to communicate….)

Anyway, the answer is not “Because I’m a great artist” or even “Because I’ve done it before”, even though this second idea is closer to the mark than the first. All of my projects are so different, you can’t really say I’ve done any of them before.

What you can say accurately (I think) is that I’ve developed a process through doing lots of related project, and that by relying on the rigors of the process, I’m pretty confident that I can deliver the relatively unknown, even in the face of a potential client’s skeptical questions.

So this post is part summary of the mural project I’ve been documenting on this blog for the last six weeks and part illustrated explication of the process– so here we go.

One thing all of my different mural and faux painting projects do have in common is that they start with an idea, usually hatched by the client or the client’s design team, not me. My design services are the bridge to reality: how to develop an idea, no matter how wild or improbable it might seem at the outset, into a tangible possibility with a realistic plan of action to achieve.

In this case, the client had the idea to improve the white vertical blinds covering the spectacular views over downtown San Diego at night by painting them with the view itself– with some improvements. Here’s the job “site”: two 15′ sections of window creating one huge panaronama.

left windows, vertical blind mural

right window, vertical blind mural

So my design of the mural started by pasting up a collage of Mike’s photos for each of the two windows to use as a reference and initial composition for the mural:

left mural panel photo reference

right mural panel photo reference

When I translate this approved composition into a scale drawing that corresponds to the actual dimensions of the site, the plan of painting action starts to take shape.

left mural panel scale design drawing

right mural panel scale design drawing

Once these line drawings were approved by the client, I expanded them to full size (more on that in future posts) and transferred them to the blinds for painting (the blinds were de-installed and “stretched” on the floor of the studio). The finished painted mural before installation:

finished left panel of mural on the floor of the studio

finished right panel of mural on the floor of the studio

So that’s one way in which I “see the big picture” when it doesn’t even exist yet, and know that I can bring into being from just an idea. Obviously, the client made this project pretty easy by knowing exactly what he wanted, and Mike made it easy with his terrific photography.

(I have more process pics an some video from this projectI’m working with right now and will publish soon.)

Yes, its been *really* cold in Pittsburgh since I arrived last Wednesday but its not just me– the natives all agree this its been January weather up until today, which was gorgeous autumn sun on the water, crisp skies and all the turning trees at their brightest, and I had the privilege of seeing the defending Super Bowl champion Pittsburgh Steelers beat the Browns at Heinz Field.

Its taken me awhile to recover from the drive across country and get acquainted with our life here in a new city, new house, etc. The kids are pretty happy despite having some flu stuff for the first time ever (Hunter already beat his) and we’ve been having fun reconnecting.

I have a basic office set up and my drafting table, and a pile of stuff to sort out, so first let me share some pictures of the final installation of the cityscape mural I just designed and painted on 32 feet of vertical blinds back in San Diego.

left windows, vertical blind mural

right window, vertical blind mural

vertcal blind mural installed, left panel

vertical blind mural installed, right panel

Since this paint treatment is designed for nighttime viewing and use, these pictures are a little anticlimactic– night time view pictures coming soon!

I’ve never taken one of my finished paintings apart before– stretched, folded, rolled, shipped, framed, unframed, cut off the bars, glued down, all of these violences I have done to my creations but this was a new one on me. Preparing the vertical blinds as blinds after completing the painting was kind of anticlimactic as an artist, though essential as a craftsperson and makes for some unique pictures.

first round of blind preparation

vertical blinds on the table

the wicked surface

This last picture shows pretty well the second and third levels of hell, I mean challenge, of painting the vertical blind surface with a coherent image (and not just an abstracted pattern). Not only was this mural painted on 122 overlapping “pieces” which have to line up properly for the image to be clear, but each piece is machined with 1/8″ vertical grooves and extruded from plastic to boot. Prep, paint adhesion and just trying to put down a straight, beautiful line (or a thousand of them, we are talking about drawing architecture here) were all special cases requiring more thought and attention than usual.

I waded through some more photos of the mural project this morning here in Las Vegas hotel room before hitting the road again and found some fun detail shots that give a good idea of both how much detail I actually put in this mural and how much extra attention was required to make clean beautiful marks on this challenging surface ( I have some more technical type pics on the blinds themselves that I’ll write about when I’m ready to relive that part– for now, I’d rather concentrate on the finished product, which makes the painting process look relatively easy and painles!)

San Diego federal buildings on left mural panel

Hyatt buildings with Coronado Island and Bridge behind

Electra residential building with Pt.Loma & Coronado in the background, as well as one of all time favorite sky painting moments

Broadway with NBC and AT&T buildings on the left mural panel

I’m about to get on the road for the drive back to the east coast even though I have more than one job pending here in San Diego. Since nobody is moving fast enough and I miss my kids, off I go.

First here are single pics of the finished mural panels right and left. These were taken from the ladder we set up in the shop and show better detail of both mural image and mural surface, which was a real challenge.

San Diego city mural right panel

San Diego city mural left panel

This mural was painted on vertical blinds (122 pieces!), each of which has a vertical groove pattern that required almost every mark on this mural to be done with spray work– you may have seen my daily mobile praise for my Iwata paint guns. Each panel is approx 16′ wide and 7.5′ tall and painted exclusively in Nova Color Artists’ paint, easily the best acrylic paint ever made (thanks for all your help on this job, Barbara!).

More detail pics and installation pics coming soon, I feel its time to go now.

With the exception of my iPhone dying last Saturday, the San Diego city mural is now complete and installed with a minimum of hassle. Here’s a quick camera pic for now while I organize the rest– until I get my iPhone repaired or replaced, no more instant publishing.

cityscape mural complete - ladder shot

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