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.

Here are some new pictures from the cityscape mural production process over the last few days, creating and perfecting the full size drawings I will use as patterns or templates on the blinds themselves. Firehouse #9 is being really good to me, my gear and this project so far, check it out!

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I’m going to put up more of this stuff on my actual mural and faux painting blog, but since I started here and I’m still screwing with the social media hook ups, I’m putting these up here first as an antidote to the iPhone pics I sent form the jobsite this morning.

Except for the “straight line details” inside the architectural bits, drawing and inking complete, painting starts tomorrow.

If you’re in San Diego, come by Cafe Mundo, 121 Juniper Street in Banker’s Hill tomorrow morning for coffee from 8-10am and check it out.

Cafe Mundo mural in Banker's Hill, San Diego

Cafe Mundo mural in Banker's Hill, San Diego

Here’s the rendering sketch again from the last post about this mural project:

black and white concept sketch for Cafe Mundo mural

I’m finally getting to show what I had in mind by following my own advice to my students by taking advantage of the awesome content management possibilities of the WordPress open source blogging software.

If you’ve followed my work from my earlier sutes to here, you know I have a lot of content in the process pictures and before-and-after photos of my custom mural and faux finish projects here in San Diego. For some projects I even have video, which will also be featured on here at some point.

Today, I just want to show off the slideshow/photo gallery I just (easily) made for a trompe l’oeil mural painting project I did last year for a children’s room with a circus theme. There’s 40 some pictures included, covering design drawings, samples, installation and process photos as well as multiple details of the trompe l’oeil circus tent wall treatment and the fabulous circus wagon cabinet I created with San Diego master woodworker Del Cover.

Check it out!