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. 

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