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

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.

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.

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!

(This should have published yesterday but didn’t– go figure.)

Red and purple sunrise, Charlotte International Airport, North Carolina.

My time-zone challenged body sits here typing and gathering up pics and threads of last few days while waiting for connection to Pittsburgh after red-eye flight from San Diego.

Yes I just flew the other way on Wednesday to take up the new vertical blind cityscape mural gig and finish the Cafe Mundo mural, too– this trip isn’t for art but for family as our moving truck finally arrives today at our Pittsburgh new place, only a week late and inconveniently after I had booked the return to SD.

Since I packed it, I figured I should be the one to unpack it (both with help of course)– its the puzzle piece organization I wouldn’t wish on anyone else to deconstruct.

Its been a little crazy, for sure, but this was a project I couldn’t pass up, here’s the first pictures.

Initial paste-ups of reference photos taken by my friend Mike Brown:

Left mural panel paste-up | photos by Mike Brown

Right panel mural paste-up | photos by Mike Brown

Now here are my preliminary cartoons for the mural panels, drawn to scale (1/2″ to 1′0″) for blocking/massing purposes, not for production yet.

Left panel mural cartoon, scale 1/2\

Right panel mural cartoon, scale 1/2\

If you look close, you’ll see I’ve already edited out one building per the client’s request, but need more research to fill in the view–> see the next post for Friday night mural research pix, or what I did on the ten year anniversary of 9/11.

I’m on the road with Heather’s Subaru full of stuff, Raul and myself headed to Pittsburgh and our new set-up there. Heather and the kids flew ahead and signed the lease on our new place while spending a few days with the McGinleys, our cousins in Point Breeze. We’re very fortunate to be living within walking distance of supportive extended family!

Ironically, just as we were packing the last boxes and preparing for the moving truck last week, I landed a really cool trompe l’oeil mural project in San Diego, so I’ll be flying right back next week to paint the new project and also finish the Cafe Mundo mural I’ve written about here.

Because I’m in a hurry to get out of my motel here in Albuquerque and go have coffee with an old friend, no new mural pictures today, but I have a bunch to get of the camera, so check back soon.

If I missed you in the rush of leaving San Diego, hit me up (mobile phone and email remain the same) and we can get together later this month when I’m back.

I’ve been keeping track of the mural project at Cafe Mundo here in Banker’s Hill with my iPhone and some instant real time publishing through my pages on Facebook and Twitter, so I thought I’d catch up some our progress here before heading over to for this morning’s session.

I’ve been very pleased to work with artist Jessica Siemens, who you may remember I mentored earlier this spring in marketing her excellent work via blogging and social media on the way to her first “art fair” appearance in April at Little Italy’s ArtWalk. (For more detail on that, search for articles on Jessica over on the San Diego Finishing School site.)

Anyway, we’ve been having a blast getting to paint together (rather than working on marketing paintings together:) and we’ve been accompanied off and on by my babies, Hunter (4) and Logan (2)– no, they don’t have their own websites yet– so I hope you enjoy these pictures.

Cafe Mundo mural progress

Cafe Mundo mural painting

Mural details

Jessica paints, Hunter and Logan supervise!

Hunter practices his craft

In all the rush of the decision to move and the finishing of San Diego projects and commitments, I forgot to post any pictures of the show of my sky paintings that continues at Joe Bedford’s Coalesce Gallery on India Street in Little Italy.

Paintings by John Hiemstra, furniture by Joe Bedford

John Hiemstra and Joe Bedford at Coalesce Gallery, Little Italy

I’ll have to go down and shoot some more, it looks like my files from the day of the show didn’t make it from camera to computer. (You can see more of this series of paintings on the Art page of this site.)

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