So after a sunny early autumn blur back to Pittsburgh– unloading the truck (finally!), moving stuff around with Heather in the new place, meeting new friends and neighbors Scott and Winfrey, Yolanda and Charlie, Tommy and Jennifer and all of their kids and dogs (our neighborhood, Point Breeze, rules!) and taking Hunter to and from school today — I’m back on the plane to San Diego.

This plane goes through Denver, making three different in-between airports in the last week (Atlanta & Charlotte first) while juggling new business venture, new painting project, new city, new house in Pittsburgh, new temporary arrangements in San Diego– who knew even I could cram this much stuff into one month and its not even the 15th yet, especially considering I left San Diego for Pittsburgh in Heather’s car on September 1st!

Anyway, the highlight of the mural project prep last week in SD was my Friday night visit to the top of 501 West Broadway with photographer Mike Brown to research the missing views of the cityscape mural– “missing” insofar as the client wants to replace a few skyscrapers with more ocean, marina and sky.

Some of these aren’t so inspiring, but its what’s being hidden by the buildings to be removed, so Mike’s super high resolution pix and mighty zoom lens make them just what I needed.

I posted a view of these pix in real time from the roof (because the evening was too beautiful not to!) with my iPhone to Twitter and beyond, so Mike shot my portrait last thing, with my face actually lit by the phone.

What a difference ten years makes– no one seemed concerned about two artists with cameras wanting to be on the top of one of the tallest building in downtown San Diego on the ten year anniversary of 9/11.

I’ll post drafts of the revised mural drawings with all this new detail as soon as they are ready!

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

• thanks for checking out my work and kind comments!! #follow these artlovers @haziethugqueen @Memaloose @LittleSweetOne @iKeralot #
• more sky painting–the dragon's turn, two years later http://bit.ly/YXNq4 show opens 7/10 in #SanDiego Little Italy NoLi nights #lt #art #

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!