A Garden for Winter

Hey Everyone!

I finished up this new mural last week, but was waiting for better pictures before posting. The whole sun-dappled thing is nice, but its not cute when it's on the mural you're trying to photograph. Luckily, the mural-owners snapped these while it was perfect light :)

Would you be so bold as to allow me to paint directly onto the outside of your house? These clients were! And they gave me a lot of freedom with the design, too. The purpose was to have this garden area bright and beautiful year-round, even in the winter when all the plants in front of it have died. And BRIGHT it is! Hooray for bold and brave clients. So much fun!! And technical note to self: painting directly onto wood siding was nothing to be worried about. Can. not. wait. to do this to my own house someday. Only, potentially on the ENTIRE outside and inside. Oh hey, future neighbors ;)

Happy weekend!

Cuter Electrical Panels!

Hey everyone!

Hope you guys are out enjoying the weekend as much as I have been! Friday was a full day of painting, and yesterday was a full day of fun. I am so so so so happy to work 4 days a week at my J.O.B. and one day a week mural-ing. My new schedule has really been helping me to divide my time between the 9-5, the hustle, and the rest of my life and the people I fill it with. Just feeling very very grateful. *end gushing*

Anyway, this is what I did on Friday: covered two boring grey metal electrical panels on the outside of an apartment building, with flowers and cuteness. It's just such a pure and simple happiness to be able to brighten up these teeny tiny corners of the world and make them a little more sparkly. I like art that "MEANS and SAYS SOMETHING", but I also very much enjoy making art that is simply about making things prettier.

A couple weeks go I started this project - all I had done was the big pink flower on the left, and started the roses. Then on Friday, made a push to finish the rest of that whole panel, plus the other one in the last picture. I realize I paint fast. Clients remark about that a lot. I have to say though, that it's definitely not necessarily a good thing. Working a tiny bit slower is actually one of my current professional goals - in painting murals, and in my day job as a graphic designer. I can be impatient. I want to see the results, and quickly. I want to see the images I have in my mind come alive on a wall (or electric panel, ha!). I also want to get to my favorite part of the painting process sooner (everything that happens after the first layers of paint are already down). But I'm trying this new thing where I take more time to think about what I'm doing. Who knows, maybe it's the NOT thinking that will be better after all, but we shall see. #goals Ok, less ramble, more pictures. Here's what I made:

 

Happy weekend everyone! 

<3 corie="" p="">

Flowers and Money!

Hey everyone!

I just finished this mural less than 2 hours ago and I'm already posting it! I'm never that on top of blogging and yet here we are :)

This one was in a laundry room for an apartment building with "gardens" as kind of their whole building theme. I was happy to get such a bright, cheery assignment. Just simple, colorful, beautifying of an otherwise un-exciting space. Can't wait for residents to be surprised when they do their laundry! Scroll to pictures or read on for a completely separate story... ha!

In totally other news, I know a lot of you that read this thing are my friends or parent's friends in real life, and some of you may have recently supported a dream of mine. This post describes the art show benefit event I held back in March, where I displayed all the paintings in my Madagascar series, and sold prints to benefit an organization that works there, and all over the world. So print sales have been trickling in since then, and I'm happy to tell you guys that I was able to donate $875 to Population Services International today! So grateful to those of you who bought a print, came to my show, or told me to break a leg. It's been an idea that's been in my head since Peace Corps in Madagascar, and I'm so happy it happened. Thank you guys so much for your support!!! It means more to me than you know. I also wanna just say something else real quick, cuz I'm feeling blog-y:

This past weekend, I had a friend visit who was in the Peace Corps with me, and we were talking (obviously) a lot about Peace Corps. She said that when she helped interview candidates for Peace Corps back where she lives, she hears a lot of people express concern over their college majors, or area of study - "but I'm just a theater major.... can I really be of service?" First of all, you will learn a bunch of stuff during Peace Corps training that will be helpful and relevant, but also, everyone can use their skills to be helpful in the world. You could (and people in Madagascar did) help organize a play in your village to explain why it's important to protect the forest and not eat lemurs!

Anyway, point is, you can use your skills to do good things. When I was younger, I thought painting was kinda silly in comparison with more "noble" careers, and wouldn't actually help that much. Now that I'm smarter (haha), I've been able to find ways to use my art to be helpful. So don't listen to people - or yourself - who say you can't be helpful by doing your "thing", whatever that is. Ok now pictures :)

Murals Soon To Be

Well, happy to report that I'm getting pretty freaking crazy busy with work for the near future!  I'll be teaching on the weekdays, mural-ing in the afternoon and weekends, and trying to squeeze in some other life stuff in between.  This is the life of an artist trying to make it their full-time job: trying to perfect the art of "The Hustle".   It's piecing together things to make up a steady job.... for me that means teaching contracts, mural and illustration commissions, and random odd jobs make a living. Making your dreams come true is hard work! 

Anyway, just thought I would share with you a bit of the design process I go through for mural commissions.  It starts with a discussion with the client.... me picking their brains for anything that will translate into images. It's like a game trying to piece together what's in someone else's brain and come up with an image for it.  For the beach house mural below, the clients had a hard time nailing down a style or direction they might want, for fear of "disrupting my creative process" with too many requirements.  I did know they wanted it "beach-y", and they liked pelicans and blue herons. So I did this:

Design #1 was waaaaay "out there". I kinda figured it would be too much, but you never know what people will respond to. 

This one was less crazy, but still bright and somewhat whimsical, not super realistic.

And this one was the most realistic.  This is what the clients chose.  The cool part of this one though, is that it will include bits of actual shells and rocks and things, glued onto the painted "beach" on the wall.  It will have a nice 3-d effect that I'm pretty excited about. 

They wanted the pelican more "stout" looking, so this was the final design they settled on.

I like to super-impose my sketches (or sometimes just photoshop collages) onto pictures of the clients' actual wall spaces. This way they can see what it will look like. The next mural I'm planning, is a big 40' banner for a client's fenced in porch.  I knew they liked Zinnias, and that they wanted it bright and celebratory.  Here's the progression of their designs:

The final design: add nasturtiums, pond background, keep the hummingbird. 

I'm SOOOO excited to paint this one.  This is right up my alley, and is something that I would paint for myself... if I had a 40' porch railing that needed a banner mural ;)

I'll keep you updated!

Corie