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.

Here are a few of the initial pics of the cityscape mural in progress. No painting yet, but creating full size drawings of the project to be used as templates/tools/patterns to produce a tight, accurate architectural drawing on a regularly uneven surface.

cityscape mural drawing in San Diego

I’m using a mix of technologies in these pictures. The first marks on the paper are drawn just like on the (hand) drafting table, trading the parallel rule for a level but making the same choices of horizon line, vanishing points, etc.

cityscape mural drawing in San Diego

I block in the shapes so that they are accurate in the full scale drawing, then use the projected image to accurately “fill in” these subdivisions. My blocking decisions in the scale drawings have been about 70% accurate, meaning I’m re-see-ing my photo references with more clarity and perfecting the final design at full size, a nice luxury to have in terms of process.

temporary but effective painting studio space in San Diego!

I use printed versions of the drawings at full 1″ scale while working as well as the projected roadmap. Ultimately the full size drawing is its own creation that involves some tracing, but really revolves around the mindful allocation of space, especially when you’re doing architecture.