trompe l’oeil detail, a photo by John Hiemstra on Flickr.

The other side of the arched window architectural detail from the Tuscan wine room project painted back in San Diego in 2003. Everything in this shot is (in reality) painted on the same plane, on the same flat wall, making it a pleasant mix of faux painting, landscape mural painting, and architectural trompe l’oeil.

The corbels were designed from historical references and drawn on paper until perfect, then perforated and transferred cleanly and quickly to the wall in traditional spolvero style that would have made Michelangelo proud.

The Tuscan vineyard landscape was developed from client research mingled with my travel pictures, which I mostly drew and painted directly onto the wall– even if Michelangelo thought landscape painting was a soft discipline for a true artist, I love the hazy feel of the far away bits of this painting and the distance evoked “outside” the arched window.

Tuscan wine room detail, a photo by John Hiemstra on Flickr.

Detail from the first of several Tuscan themed painting projects in San Diego. Everything in this shot is (in reality) painted on the same plane, on the same flat wall, making it a pleasant mix of faux painting, landscape mural painting, and architectural trompe l’oeil.

I created a two-step faux glaze treatment for the entire room (more orange than I would have liked, but the client was happy to get exactly what he asked for. (Guess which of us had actually been to Tuscany when I painted this. :)

The corbels were designed form historical references and drawn on paper until perfect, then perforated and transferred cleanly and quickly to the wall in traditional spolvero style that would have made Michelangelo proud.

The Tuscan vineyard landscape was developed from client research mingled with my travel pictures and I created the town architecture in the same way as the corbels, ahead of time on paper and transferred exactly onto the wall. The rest of the landscape I blocked out in the design process, but drew and painted directly onto the wall-- Michelangelo would have appreciated that, too, thinking as he did that landscape painting was a soft discipline for the true artist.

See the completed Tuscan wall mural here.

Most of my friends and fans know I am passionate about good architectural design and architectural history, and that architectural rendering has been central to my work in the entertainment industry and much of the trompe l’oeil mural painting I’ve designed and produced as an independent contractor.

Naturally, one of my favorite institutions in San Diego is the annual Orchids and Onions awards ceremony sponsored by the San Diego Architectural Foundation, which both honors the best new work in San Diego as voted by the community (orchids), and properly pillories the worst design and architecture moves that slip past San Diego city planners and concerned citizens (Onions).

So I was really pleased to give the okay for the time lapse film of my last large scale architectural mural project (a panorama of the downtown San Diego city skyline painted on vertical blinds for a downtown San Diego penthouse suite) to be looped on a big screen in the background of this year’s Orchids and Onions event next week on November 4!

My good friend and photographer Mike Brown recorded almost four weeks of me working with hi-def time lapse stills photographs-- over 60,000 of them-- and edited it all down into an eight-minute film that we’ve been working into a proper documentary with narration and additional process images and footage I took with my own camera.

Next week we’re going to release a couple of trailers before the event and finalize a couple other donations to the SDAF, but as a preview before the weekend I captured some stills from the finished part of the film for a slideshow here-- enjoy! (If you’re unfamiliar with the project, please see this project overview post I put up almost exactly a year ago upon completion).

I want to put up some more detail pictures from the vertical blind mural project, but after some time working on other projects it seems like my mural gallery here needs a little variety right now, so I’m posting this picture of a fun little job I did way back in San Diego in the home of fellow artist and wonderful woman Gloria Paris.
 
The idea is a traditional trompe l’oeil painting subject; to put a window on a blank wall that needs one. The moulding and corner rosette design around the window correspond to the real windows in the room on the far wall. the view related to what you might see if there really was a window in this spot, and no house on the next lot east!
 

So here is the finished right hand panel of the San Diego cityscape mural, rendered with lots of patience on a set of vertical blinds for a penthouse apartment with a similar view. Each panel is approx 16′ wide x 8′ high.

As I get back to work for 2010, I see that I left off any finished pictures of the cityscape mural painted on vertical blinds, my last project in San Diego before coming to Pittsburgh (and actually the first mural pictures I put up when I started out this new and improved mural portfolio last fall) so I’m going to address these next.
 
This is the left “panel” finished on the floor in the shop. There are sixty actual blinds making up the paint surface/image plane in this photo, each one three and a half inches wide, adding up to an over all span of about sixteen feet by about eight feet tall.
 
The nighttime view of San Diego looks west up Broadway on the left and down Front Street to the bay on the right.
 
You can real time posts I made during this projects with progress photos on my blog at johnhiemstra.com/murals-sandiego.

This is the other San Diego sports logo mural I painted in 2008 for Lucky D’s, a local throwback rock and roll themed sports bar in San Diego’s East Village. This is the original Chargers’ logo after they settled in San Diego in the 1960′s, painted in a distressed style to reflect both its origins and the flavor of the bar.

I’m publishing this today in honor of the Chargers clinching the AFC West over the Bengals yesterday-- good luck in the playoffs, Philip Rivers and Company!

This is the opposite end of the little girls’ room from the Torrey Pine sheltered reading corner, where you enter from the main house. The single door on the left is the door to the hallway; the double doors on the right open to a nice big walk-in closet.

I always like to “camouflage” real-world items with trompe l’oeil style wall mural effects when given the opportunity by the subject matter, actually, the “disagreement” of the subject matter with the room itself.

Kids murals | ocean and rocky beach