Forestry Court Apartments Mural

Hi everyone!

In my mission to post about a backlog of projects, today I'm sharing a very Northwest-y mural. This project came about when I was asked to paint something on the walls of an apartment building's lobby. This building is located in Northwest Portland, close to Forest Park - a lush backdrop of forest covered hills over the city's west side. The name of the apartments - Forestry Court - and it's proximity to actual forest, inspired a pretty obvious choice for the mural's imagery. The lobby is fairly dim, with little natural light, so I knew that I wanted to infuse a bit of "daylight" into the mural. A whole lot of Indian Yellow helped me create an illusion of that magic "golden hour" feel. It's that time of day when the sun is getting ready to start setting, and there are long shadows on the ground, and everything turns, well, golden. We knew we wanted to cover all of the available walls in the room, which was one large and prominent wall, plus two tall and narrow walls to the sides. Though there were hallways cutting through between the walls, I wanted them all to work together to create one cohesive piece. Then, the viewer's imagination could then fill the empty spaces between. 

I always enjoy the challenge of making it look like light is shining through the leaves on a tree. That almost-neon green that is formed by a back-lit leaf is so juicy and bright to look at in the natural world. Hard to capture in a painting, but worth trying. 

Once the main walls were done, I waited for a warmer day to paint some areas in the outside entryway. I figured just some greenery would help beautify the empty spaces in the tiling, and serve as a preview to what you'll see when you enter the building. 

I remember painting this in such a "flow" state - almost a trance. Nature is something I'm pretty darn used to painting by now, so it doesn't require a whole lot of thought - at least not conscious thought. When painting this kind of subject matter, what it really requires of me, is to turn off my conscious thought process, and just let my hands do their thing. It's projects like this, when I will listen to podcasts and audiobooks, to keep my mind occupied while my hands do the work. More complicated projects require more thinking (architectural or geometric work is like this). Does this make sense? It's just one of those things I've come to learn and nurture about the way my brain works.

This project totally inspired me to paint something like this in my home. I want a forest wall! Or door, or garage door, or kitchen. My house only has one mural so far - another project on the list to share. More to come!

Hope you enjoy the pictures and video of this fun forest-y mural!

Owls and Aspens

Hi Everyone! I'm posting about a project on the day I painted it...whaaat? So prompt.

I loved this one. Not only for obvious reasons (got to paint fluffy baby owlets), but for reasons not shown in these pictures. I loved painting this wall because the owner of it was an extraordinarily sweet person with a cute, cute family. When I started painting murals for money about 14 (WHAT?!?) years ago, I only really painted for family friends, or friends of friends. But now that my business has grown, my clients are mostly strangers. And I love when I meet nice strangers and get to connect with their families. Painting inside someone's home means asking a lot of questions about their lives. It means being in their space for hours on end and playing with their children. It sometimes means eating meals in their homes or accepting a bottomless cup of tea. This job allows me to meet people in my city that I would otherwise maybe never get to know. In all these years, I can only remember a couple of instances where my gut was telling me to avoid a Stranger Danger situation, and I did not go through with a mural. The other 99% of my clients have been pretty darn lovely. Anyways, with this one, I just felt very welcomed into this family's home. They even offered to let me and my fiance stay the night when they heard our furnace was broken (fixed now!). More than that, these murals seem to mean a lot to them. I am slowly transforming a dark and dingy basement into a lighter, brighter space for their children to play. They are picking trees, colors, and animals that are significant to their family. The funniest thing was, after all that thought and planning, none of us realized until I was finished that I had painted an owl mom of twins - just like my client and her children. How did we miss that one? 

This is one of 3-4 smaller vignette-type of projects we have planned in their home. Loving the challenge of creating pieces that fade off into their wall, instead of completely covering it. Super fun!

Malheur Wildlife Refuge Mural... and birds!

Hey everyone!

Happy weekend!! So the post from last week, kinda goes with this one. The forest mural I posted last time was for the same client as this one; one mural inside, one outside. My client for these was a major bird-watcher person, so I was super nervous I would get some bird details wrong. They passed her test though - ornithologically correct! Man that's a big word. 

This one was super fun! Challenging to try and make this mural for her closet doors go with all the other colors she had going on in her room - different artworks too. It was a good challenge though, and got me to focus on slight color variations, and more neutrals than I would naturally go for (I know it's still pretty colorful though... I have a problem). Anyway, super fun couple of projects, I loved pushing the paint around on these. Delicious. 

Next time, suuuuuper long hallway mural and a few more consults coming up. Excited to hear new client's ideas :)