Mount Rainier and Seattle in all it's (neon blacklight-y) glory

Hi everyone!

I recently had the pleasure of trying something I've never tried before, artistically. And I have to say, not only did it turn out pretty ok, I'm sorta obsessed with the process. I got to paint with light. 

I was commissioned by a family friend to paint a not-super-realistic portrayal of Mt. Rainier and the Seattle skyline, surrounded by a whole lot of nature, including a lake. Now, I'm not exactly sure if this is a real view that exists in life somewhere, but it was made clear to me that it wasn't the important part of the project. We cut and pasted different scenes and photos together to create this city/mountain mash-up. 

The painting was commissioned to be the focal point of my client's new home-bar area. So cool! (like the over-achiever version of the bar cart trend) I made a canvas to fit the exact dimensions of his wall space. The client's idea was to have a painting with fairly ambiguous time-of-day lighting, so that he could also commission another buddy to build him an elaborate lighting set up to go along with the painting. From my understanding, the lighting set-up will have different colors/settings/timers so that it can shine light on the painting to make it look like it's going from daylight to sunset, to night time. By the time it's dark, the only light shining on it will be blacklight. So I was asked to make the painting look normal in the daylight, and totally light up under blacklight! 

Coolest commission ever, no? Also a challenge, since I haven't worked with glow-in-the-dark/blacklight paint since I was probably 13. The process was this: I painted the painting as I normally would paint, but also added a ton of neon pigment into my colors as I mixed them. Neon acrylic is most definitely something I already had laying around, (because duh), so that part was nothing new to me. I knew that the neon would light up under the blacklight, so I was strategic about it's placement. After the whole thing was painted and dry, I turned out all the lights in my studio, except a blacklight. Then I painted over everything a bit, with the blacklight paint (I used Golden brand's glow-paint, recommended highly to me by the Art Store Guy). It was such a weird experience to paint in complete darkness. The paint totally lit up on my paper plate palette, and as I brushed it onto the dark canvas. I felt I was painting with pure light. When I turned on the lights, the glow-paint was nearly invisible. SO. COOL. 

This was beyond fun, and my client was beyond cool. I must do more of this magic. Anyone need a painting or mural with a HIDDEN MESSAGE on it?!?!? A love note that only shows up under blacklight? A political statement? A hidden design? Let's play, guys!!!

On the easel

Done! In day light...

Hanging in it's place at the bar!

Under BLACKLIGHT!!!

A Rooster and a Restoration

Hi Everyone!

Time for some catch-up posting! This post is admittedly mostly a record for myself, just as a way to keep track of the projects I've done recently. But maybe you will like?

Project #1, yet-to-be-blogged: A rooster painting for my mom's birthday! My family members often request paintings from me for holidays and birthdays. This time, it was my mom asking for a painting of a rooster. As a family, we all recently went on an incredible trip to Hawaii together. My partner, my sister and her partner, and I, all went to the big island, then all returned to work (ahhhh #worklife). My parents and my aunt and uncle, kept vacay-ing on Kauai. Kauai has these crazy-colorful roosters that my mom absolutely loved. Hence, the painting request. I really love to paint animals of all kinds, and this was a really fun one. It was a challenge to try and capture the rainbow iridescence that sometimes happens on some bird's black feathers. I put him on a beach, to tie in the hawaiian vibe. So fun! The lighting is a tiny bit different in each of these, so attaching both pics. So fun!

Project #1, yet-to-be-blogged: A mural restoration! This one came through a couple months ago, and was a different one. There were 3 murals painted in an older apartment complex, in the 80's. They had definitely seen better days - lots of cracking and peeling and water damage from time taking it's toll. They asked me to come in and fix them all. First, I just gave them all a good scrub down. Some of the discoloration appeared only to be dirt, which was a nice surprise. Then, I went to work peeling everything off that was already about to peel. That left some pretty signifigant empty patches, which I then spackled and sanded down. Then I added a coat of gesso, to seal the spackle work and protect against future water damage. Then finally, I did a lot of paint mixing and color matching, and restored the actual artwork. This was a new sort of challenge for me, but it was really nice to know that now it can truly be a part of repetoire, since I think it turned out pretty well. The best part, was when an older gentleman came up and introduced himself to me. He told me that his son was the one that had painted the murals all those years ago. Then he had decided to live there, and has been a resident ever since. I loved that, and felt really good to be able to clean them up for him to see every day!! Warm and fuzzy feels. 

BEFORE:

AFTER: