Doc Office Mural

Several weeks ago I packed up my little cicada car (PT Cruiser), put on my sunglasses, filled up my iPod, and drove 10 hours up to West Hartford, CT for my seventh long-distance mural. My client was my uncle Mike, who is a Doctor of Osteopathy. 

The waiting room in his office is decorated with lots of beautiful artwork from Ten Thousand Villages (where my aunt Donnie works), but still felt a little empty. I designed a mural that would bring the existing artwork and the empty space together and to life. These before-and-after shots are of the plain office Mike and Donnie left behind on vacation, and the finished mural they came home to.

BEFORE

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AFTER

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Check out the PROJECT PAGE for a process .gif, more detail shots, a closeup of the original Ten Thousand Villages metalwork piece, and more!


Calendar

Okay, it's been radio silence here on the blog for a bit, but that is for an excellent reason - I've been very happily busy, mostly with planning and travels! Last week I drove up from Richmond, VA to West Hartford, CT to paint my uncle's new office for his osteopathic practice. I'll be doing a whole post about that later, because it has to wait until they get back from vacation and experience ~The Great Reveal~

In the meantime, I want to finally show off something I did several months ago in my apartment. I needed a calendar for 2014, and I needed to plan lots of big things across the course of the whole year... so I really wanted to see the whole year at once. 

Naturally, the solution to this problem is a mural. 

 It's a good home-base for fitting everything together (although it is a little hard to fit in my pocket.) Now I can plan straight through the months without the weird end-of-the month jump of a regular calendar.

I'm thinking about making a new one for 2015 and have it printed on this scale as a wall-hanging....? ....! I think it would be pretty awesome, but I don't know if other people feel the need to plan this way... or have the wall space. Comment if you think you might, or think someone else would! 

References part II

First of all, I want to offer a HUGE HAPPY THANK YOU to everyone who came out to the Garden Party last week! It was a lovely afternoon, the weather was perfect, and I was delighted to have the opportunity to share my work in person with so many friends, family, patrons, etc. etc.

I owe a special Thank You to Kathy Hayfield for opening her house for the occasion, my mom for letting me lean on her hardened event-planning skills, and some particularly helpful and patient friends who set up, played music, acted as tech support, and more. 

Finally, congratulations to Sarai Alvarado who won the door prize! She gets to choose between a mini-mural or initial/mural painting, gratis!  I'll be posting here about how her prize turns out~ All of you who entered and didn't win, I am available for commission for both of these lovely options, ideal for those who can't commit to a full mural but would still like a hand-painted decorative touch to their space.

Now, I just finished drafting ELEVEN networking and client emails and I am pooped. I think this is the time to review and share some lovely relaxing reference pictures from The Files, and then tell myself to go play outside and build some character. 

Here's the first post about accumulating reference photography. I think now I'll just call them Reference part III, IV, etc.

Sometimes the reference isn't about capturing a beautiful moment - instead it's a way to take notes. My note here is "what the heckity heck is that bug? and is that a thistle? is that what thistles look like?? whoah."

From KCMO, on a wandering I took while attending the Illustration Academy.

Not sure exactly what trail this is from, but both pictures were taken near Blacksburg, VA.

I'm always on the lookout for landscape and foliage reference, especially in terms of how to fill an unusually shaped space. These are quite the vertical layouts for forest scenes, and I'm waiting for the perfect opportunity to come along to use it.

This place was hard to get a good picture of, so they fall into the 'visual notes' category. The note they represent is: holy cow, a place like this exists! Also, this is what cave water and looming depths can look like. 

And finally, inspiration from within the art world can be just as powerful as from without. Who wouldn't be inspired by this guy? Feeling crushed by the weight of the world, or by horrible hell-beasts? Crush those problems under your mighty heel!

"No problemo" he says. Thanks overconfident dude. No problemo indeed. 

Unfortunately I have no idea who painted this, or when. All I know is that it's from the Louvre, and I probably was breaking a law by taking a picture of it. 

Next week I'll be starting a mural in Connecticut! 8+ hours on the road, here I come! 

Don't forget to 'like' or comment when you read - you know it warms the cockles of my heart.