This project IS mine, but continues on the theme, because even though I’m painting it in my studio here in Pittsburgh its destination is back in San Diego and southern California.
 
This client and I met several years ago at one of the public art events I used to do in Little Italy San Diego, either the autumn chalk painting festival that goes with the annual Columbus Day weekend Festa or the annual spring ArtWalk– I don’t remember which, but what I like about this story is that she had kept my card for five plus years when she finally got in touch to have me paint for her.
 
She gave it to me last fall in San Diego when I went to look at her project, it had my old Sprint cel number I had forgotten about and my original web address, http://john-scenic.com. I still keep a page there, and sure enough she was able to find me. Score more points for online business presence.
 
So here’s what we’re doing, a fun bit of exterior trompe l’oeil to bring a “view” to a ground floor exercise room whose windows open to a light well.
 

Designed to view from the treadmill (above), this mural was originally going to be painted on the stucco wall outside the window on a return trip to San Diego. Because I’ve gotten so busy here in Pittsburgh not painting, that trip isn’t happening soon, so we’ve agreed that I will paint the image on canvas in the studio here and ship. My friend and colleague Eric Gilliat of Level One Art Installation will stretch and install on site.

 
Here’s a close-up of the black-and-white through-the-window mural design sketch.
 




and the head-on elevation sketch in 1.5″ scale.

 




Its a mountain landscape, with meadow and horses in the foreground, composed by specific request in an email dialogue illustrated with Google image searches. I use the black and white “cartoon” drawing like this for planning and layout purposes, and they receive approval from clients/designers before I move forward with color or samples.
 
So I’m painting this right now, taking pictures as I go to share with you here, but wanted to start from the beginning on this one. Watch for color renderings and more Pittsburgh-San Diego paint business irony this weekend.

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.

The client went even further in having a photographer (in this case my friend, Mike Brown) shoot the views from his building as a visual reference for what he wanted painted, and having the photos shot on a night when even the sky was how he wanted it in the final painting.

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:

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.

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:

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.

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!

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

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

.. 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