...is done, and I hope Nervous Nellie Client will be happy with it. Here it is on the drawing board earlier today, drying. It's about 12" high.



Then I came home and did another little graphic of an olive twig for my brother, for his new business. Long boring story there too.

( Cut for plans and stuff. )

This is a shallow niche above an old stone fireplace. When it was decided to paint the basement walls a much lighter, brighter color (they'd been damn near battleship grey prior to this), we had a problem. Namely, putting that nice new paint next to these dingy old stones would make them look much worse than they were. I'm afraid my camera's flash did the same; you'll have to trust me when I say that the painting was a much better solution.

( Full view, and a bunny, under the cut )

This is where I've been spending time lately, when I'm not out cleaning houses. Nice little job. More to come on Friday.





... and in other news, tonight I am working on a dog portrait. Yet another Dead Black Dog. Y'all have no idea how many Dead Black Dogs I get. I should have a whole gallery of them somewhere on my site.

The great thing about this one is, they actually had a shockingly good photo for me to work from. Shocking because it is so very, very rare that there is even one decent reference pic of the dearly departed.

And the reason I joke about this is not because I lack sympathy, I promise. It's a coping mechanism; if you've ever tried to draw/paint black animals, especially when the reference photos are crappy and you can't get better ones because the animal is no longer with us, you know why I need a coping mechanism.

Okay, so the mural site has two large (I mean LARGE) walls. So each of these sets of thumbnails is a set, like you see above; one for the left wall and one for the right. The idea being to create a landscape that will be visually linked by the water. Two more (larger) sets are under the cut.
( More thumbnails here! )

This is a commission for a local bakery. Based on a photo of the building back around 1940. Four feet high by five feet wide; still in progress. I'll take more pics on Monday when I'm back there. Earlier shots in progress under the cut so if you're curious you can see how it developed.
( two more pics )

The train I used as a model for this is the Eureka & Palisades No. 4, the only one of its kind still in operating condition. Vintage 1875.



You've seen the chickadee and the bunny; here they are in context. Below, the Penguin Window at the kids' play area.

It really doesn't look all that different from a distance.  You can tell I filled in the foreground a bit, though.

This was taken around 12:30 yesterday afternoon; by then, I was beginning to lose my shade, and the tree shadow/sunlight pattern made photography a little difficult.



If you really want to see what I was dealing with when the sun hit this wall, enlarge the photo below.  Painting on this texture in the shade?  Not the easiest thing in the world, but no huge problem.   Painting on it in bright sunlight? Dizzying.  Especially since the glare very quickly screws up your color perception.



Having said all that, it was a good gig and I'd happily do another:  in three days I paid my rent/utilities for the month.

House wasn't chalky-mint-colored as it appeared in the photo I was sent; it's a very pleasant green, a little warmer than it looks here, in fact.

Kids, it was HOT out there today. Not bad while there was shade from the trees, but around 2 p.m. all shade disappears and ugh.

 This took me about 15 hours total, and you're not seeing all of the tree here.  The light from the window was causing glare on the wall, although I have a feeling I'm going to be back in this house before terribly long, so perhaps I'll get a better photo then.



The little boy whose room this is, is very happy and has named the leopard Hunter. And I, being the giant geek that I am, keep grinning and thinking, "Works for me."

ETA a snapshot of that wall as it was before my arrival yesterday morning:

Water had leaked from an upstairs bath, causing this section (left side) of the downstairs ceiling to have to be torn out and re-plastered. 



( cut for process pics and blah blah blah )