Hi Everyone!

 

This week's mural had me travellin'! I got to paint this little ocean wall for a couple in Seattle. Conveniently, my best friend also happens to live there. Business trip meets weekend getaway! A day and a half of painting + the cutest neighborhood pub + the cutest neighborhood brunch place + the cutest neighborhood ice cream hot spot (for you Portlanders, think Seattle's version of Salt and Straw, but without the insane line) + catching up and late night talks over tea + cooking delicious dinner together = weekend success! (Can you tell I ate well?) I'm happy with how this little ocean scene turned out, and hoping that it brings many relaxing tub soaks, far into the future for my clients. Can you hear the waves? I love the Pacific Northwest and it's coastline.

 

In about 10 days, I will be headed wayyyyyy down the coast to paint an entirely different landscape of the Pacific: San Diego! I'll be working in another Memory Care facility that is being built there. I'm SO EXCITED to fill it with murals. Stay tuned, that will be a mural marathon for sure. paint paint paint. :)

 

 

Mirror-selfie of paint clothes/gear, and the wall only a couple hours in. And yes I stood in that bathtub all day!

 

 

 

 

Yachats Beach House Mural

This last mural project had some serious perks.  I got to stay at a beach house in Yachats, OR. with an ocean view for 2 nights, while I worked on the mural for their mud porch!  I brought my Dad along, who is a watercolor artist, so he could paint too!  It was great to have him there... good company and also another artistic eye to bounce things off of.  Love you Dad! (I know you're reading this.) At the end of the weekend, here's what it looked like:

BEFORE:

The approved digital collage/sketch done in photoshop.... 

And AFTER:

Painted shadows for all the objects for the beach...

REAL shells, driftwood, beach glass, agates glued onto the wall!!!

A few painted "shells" in the background to blend into the real ones glued on.

This one was really a lot of fun to do.  Not only was it fun to paint, but figuring out the 3-d and textural elements for the mural was exciting for me.  After sketching the design on the wall, I brushed a bunch of granular acrylic gel (basically just clear paint with sand and chunky stuff in it) onto the sand and beach area.  This stuff dried to a bumpy, sandy finish. Then I painted the sand colors over it, and added the shells and rocks and driftwood at the very end.  The mural is so much fun to touch!! Loving the idea of blending 2-d with 3-d.  

The vacation rental owners had a very positive reaction to seeing the mural. The honor and pleasure of turning someone's vision into reality, and transforming their space, is what gets me excited about painting murals for clients.  It can be really difficult to get inside a client's head, and try to filter their feelings, thoughts and words through my own brain, to still get an image they want in the end.  It's what unique, custom, tailored-to-you murals are all about - asking the right questions to find out what the client wants, and then giving it to them.

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