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.)

Cleaned up the studio today for an impromptu opening tonight during the South Park Walkabout– if you’re in San Diego, head over and stop in the big open doors on 30th and Juniper near the corner with the musicians under the awning. Get a one time only look at the San Diego cityscape mural I’ve been creating on 30 feet of vertical blinds.

san diego cityscape mural on vertical blinds

My friend photographer Mike Brown will be screening the first cut of the time lapse video he has been shooting the last week documenting my progress painting the mural. If you can’t make it, here’s a couple mural process shots of mine. I’ll post a link to Mike’s videos when they’re uploaded.

mural painting process pictures

masking down on finished sky painting

back at the beginning of architectural drawing for San Diego city mural

laying down the mural drawing

Here are some pictures from the first two days of actually putting paint on the vertical blind “canvas” itself, after a week plus of prep.

city mural sky painting

I painted the sky almost entirely with my Iwata spray guns and a lot of careful masking– its always *really* gratifying to pull the masking away and see a painted finish running clean to its edges!

city mural sky painting detail

After the skyline gets detailed, I put the paper drawings back down to transfer the rest of the image:

city mural drawings down a second time

The cityscape develops one piece at a time– the drawings are cut into five or six pieces for manageability.

cityscape mural drawing

.. now its time to get to the real business at hand!

Cityscape mural sample

This sample is on board approximately 30″ x 40″ using the full scale drawing prepared for the final surface. The colors are close to the desired goal- I’ll be making a few adjustments- and the style and atmosphere of the painting right on!

More dramatic pictures of full scale process coming soon!

• Woodley already has a sack in first preseason quarter! #
• Publishing Test: http://bit.ly/3FRXwh #
• testing out a different connection… #
• Lovely morning painting with artist @jessicasiemens on the Cafe Mundo mural! #

UPDATE: on the mobile publishing thing, youcan see all the pictures I’ve taken of this project so far on my Flickr page, which I’ve got dialed in with the great Ping.fm service.

Here’s some iPhone progress pics of the Cafe Mundo mural painting from yesterday. I was playing with “real-time” publishing– these are already posted on my Facebook page via Twitter, Ping.fm and Flickr.

mural painting progress at Cafe Mundo August 12, 2009

mural painting progress at Cafe Mundo August 12, 200

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

Its now “official” that Heather and I are moving our studio and kids to Pittsburgh at the end of August, and I’ve been so busy with projects that I haven’t posted as much in the way of updates as its happened–> so much so fast!>

I’ve been working on a slew of new websites for my marketing clients as well, while trying to keep up with my wife Heather’s jewelry design work because she’s been doing a lot of work in the run-up to the move, too.

At any rate this month I’m working on my final mural and faux painting project in San Diego (for the forseeable future anyway- I will be back for other business from time to time, so I suppose its not out of the question to arrange something) at my friends Cafe Mundo around the corner here in Banker’s Hill, and this morning I started the exterior mural part of the project and had part 1 of an art studio moving sale over coffee all at the same– thanks to everyone who came out, I’ll be doing the same next Saturday with even more art making stuff sorted out to be sold cheap or given away. I still have some good tools for sale, and a variety of picture frames, stretcher bars for canvas, and painting panels.

Cafe Mundo is a simple little neighborhood coffee shop– we’re just putting a little polish on the details and creating an exterior “landmark” while they are partially closed for a kitchen upgrade to their pizza making component.

The “landmark” is a 16′ x 8′ mural on four panels designed around local Banker’s Hill imagery given a light Parisian art nouveau twist derived from the Cafe’s adopted icon– both images shown below. (Pics tomorrow!)

black and white concept sketch fpr Cafe Mundo mural

Cafe Mundo icon and inspiration