I Wish Every Painting Day Was A Moose

Last weekend, I blocked in a pair of moose. Today, we gave the moose some good detail. ANyway, I had a lot of fun bringing the moose out so it looked less like just a splotch of paint. I enjoyed depicting this clumsy-looking, yet graceful creature as a spot of interest in the mural.

Growing up in Idaho, my father, my brothers and I would often go on a plein-air painting excursion to West Yellowstone, Montana, Jackson Hole, Wyoming or Island Park, Idaho. Occasionally, we would see moose come out of the woods and into an open clearing off in the distance. Not wanting to miss anything, I would put my paintbrush down and quietly watch the creature move about in it's natural setting. Sometimes, I would take off in my car to a bird refuge west of Rexburg, Idaho to study Great Blue herons, Sandhill Crane, Snowy Egrets, Comorants and other bird variety, yet I never made painting wildlife a career. Nor am I a hunter like many wildlife artists, yet I would sometimes put wildlife in my landscape paintings as an accent or to add a little life. Perhaps I could have been a wildlife artist.

In 2006, I put some waterfowl and a paint pony in the Inteliserv (a former Novatek business) mural . A few months later, I painted an elk and waterfowl in the foreground of a mural I painted for Alcoa, inc. I sent pictures of these two mural jobs to Cabelas the week after finishing the Alcoa project and heard back from Cabelas corporate office about a week later. In 2007, Cabelas hired me to paint five habitat murals for their under construction East Hartford, Connecticut retail store. It would be nice to get another Cabelas job someday.

Tomorrow, I will go shopping for some smaller paint brushes than I have been using so I can finish the animals. I hope to have the entire mural looking more finished by this weekend.

Jay Gets His Eagle (And A Jay Bird)

Had a little fun with the shop manger today. On the first day I started this mural, the shop manager noticed I was on the job and headed towards me from about 100 feet away. On his face I read what he was going to ask me, "Are you going to put an eagle in the mural?". By the time he came up to me, I answered what I knew was on his mind before the words came out of his mouth, "Yes." I said, "I plan on painting an eagle somewhere in the mural". Satisfied, and without saying a word, the shop manager, who's name is Jay, walked away happy.

The next day, I laid out the mural in charcoal. Along with the layout, I drew an eagle next to the managers office window and wrote the words "Jay Bird" next to the eagle. Everyone thought that was a pretty funny joke.

As the mural progressed, Jay would periodically ask me If I was still planning on putting the eagle in. I would tease him back and say "Of course! And each time you bug me about it, there will be one less eagle feather on the eagle. It really will be a bald eagle!"

I planned to paint and eagle soaring in the sky and thought it would be a fun joke to replace eagle I drew in charcoal with a Stellars Blue Jay. My original plan was to paint a blue jay sitting in a tree next to Jay's window.

Well, today I finally got in the mood to paint in the eagle. The eagle looked good and appeared to be diving for it's prey with sharp talons ready to grip it with a deadly clutch.

When Jay came out of his office and saw the eagle, he was pleased, yet he commented, "It looks like the eagle is after it's prey. You should have it chasing another bird. Maybe a bird that's sitting in the top of a tree." He then went back into his office. While he was at his desk, I had a fun idea. I painted a bird next to the eagle, frantically trying to get away. Jay has a son who also works in the building. He saw the eagle and said he liked it. He knew his dad would be pleased. I asked him if he knew what kind of bird was flying next to the eagle. He said he didn't know, so when I said "Why, it's a Jay bird, a Stellars Blue Jay!", you should have seen the grin that formed on his face.

The Mural Is About 80% Complete

Along with solving areas which were difficult to design, I have to be concerned about the balance of light and dark. I have felt some of the areas have been too dark for the clients taste, so today, I pulled out some more patches of light, warmed some areas which will remain on the darker side for contrast, simplified some areas and changed a tree color. Overall, the mural is beginning to work well, so now it's the marathon to the finish.

I also added a bull and cow moose. The cow is okay where it is at, but after blocking in the moose, I realize now that proportion wise, the bull is too small, especially compared to the rocky mountain goat ram at the base of the falls. I could let it go, but the mural will be viewed by some VIP's. I have to be accurate and professional. Some of the employees say not to change it, but as for my gut feeling and for clear a conscience I will change it to the proper scale. After all, I am a professional and someone would eventually come along and notice it wasn't right.

The Struggle Paid Off

We had a really good day painting. At first this morning, I was still unsure as to how to completely resolve the design challenges in the Point area. I kind of knew, but was at first too timid about it. I called my younger brother Marty on my cell and asked him to come for a critique. After the call, I got real bold and put down rich broad shades of a reddish-golden hue, which finally made the Point sing with morning light. Thirty minutes later Marty came by. He liked what I had been doing and said, "Just finish it". I feel more relaxed about the mural now that this challenge has been overcome. Whew!

Quickdraw Mc Ricks

Last weekend, my wife Sammee and I stopped at Deseret Industries ( a thrift store). I was looking for a mans apron. All they had in mens was an apron which looked like Woody, a character in the animated movie, "Toy Story". You know, I just might be the fastest mural painter in the West!

The line of Aspen trees along the cliff ridge behind the falls is getting the look & feel I have been shooting for. Roberts Point is looking better and the streaks of light I added near the falls looks just about right.

Refresh

The weekend of February 18-19th, my wife "Sammee" and I took a breather. We spent the weekend in downtown Salt Lake. She did genealogical research, while I toured Temple Square and photographed cityscapes for paintings. While relaxing in the Marriott Hotel, I believe I further came to a better solution to the design problems of Roberts Point. This coming week, I may try to apply what I learned to resolve the design eye sore. It is important that we not leave an uncomfortable big dark area. The solution calls for softer colors and values plus continue to simplify the area. The idea came from the way an artist painted the World Room Mural for the Salt Lake Temple.

In the early years of the Restored Church, talented LDS (Mormon) artists were called on missions to study plein-air painting in France with the French Masters. They would return to Salt Lake from their missionary assignment 2-3 years after their artistic studies began, to paint temple murals. There is some really nice painting on the walls of the Salt Lake Temple interior. I hope the Lord will give me the opportunity to paint a temple mural someday. It would be a humbling and richly creative spiritual experience. I would feel it a sacred honor if I am called upon by the church to fulfill such an assignment.

Pulling Through

Although some areas of the mural have been very challenging --- even frustrating, we are now making greater progress. Most of the major challenges have been in the way of structural obstacles on the wall. First, we had to deal with redesigning the waterfall area because of double doors with windows. Second, and most frustrating, has been the structural I-beam upright which interferes with Roberts Point. Now, most of this is behind us and I don't anticipate another major structural obstacle --- cross your fingers!

Other minor challenges include interruptions by onlookers wanting to talk or ask questions, thus cutting down on my days productivity. Some argue about the way I approach the painting of the project. Basically, they can get a little impatient, thinking that an easier or more logical approach would be to paint by number. That may be, but it would look like a paint by number. I want my mural work to not only fulfill the assignment of the client, but also to have an edge of museum quality, evokes an emotional response, is inspirational and uplifting, which requires greater artistic effort and goes beyond mere surface technique. Most of the engineers at this mural project don't understand the painting processes of my mental AND heartfelt efforts, but they do appreciate the end result. Good art reaches beyond a just visual experience. Good art, in my humble opinion, stirs a heartfelt emotional response. To accomplish this, I must reach beyond logic and somehow tap into emotional and spiritual stimulation.

Todays Progress

February 16, 2011.
Roberts Bench got a rework. We enlarged the basic shape by about 15% and gave it better form. I am much happier with it now. The Point (pointed peak to the left of the bench) is still giving me heck. The point will also get a makeover before we are finished with the project. Right now, it is just too busy. Simplify, simplify, but the challenge of the beam is a concern. When I do a larger scale mural, for example; 25 feet by 150 feet, The vertical supports, conduit or almost any 3-D object, are not too much of a challenge. Where this mural is a smaller, the shapes are all smaller, making the supports more of a challenge to paint around.

The trees in the area to the right fourth section are starting to show a little more form than just flat patterns. The tree portion of the mural will probably be painted quicker than the rest of the scene.

On a funny note... One of the employees where I'm painting the mural almost got his face painted! No, I don't do that kind of thing. I don't have body paints anyway, but as I was painting on double doors at about my eye level, the man came barreling through without thinking I might be on the other side. The brush was just inches away from his face!

Challenges Can Lead To Better Solutions

Today we reworked Roberts Point in the face of a design challenge. The challenge; Make it look interesting in spite of obstacles. The obstacle; two iron upright supports which go right through the middle of the granite form.

How are we solving the problem?

We added large masses of snow patches to help simplify the area. As we refine the snow, some of it will be in sunlight, some in shadow.

Midway up the cliff and to it's right side, the peak will have a large portion of this area bathed in warm sunlight. We will also bring the lighter olive green grasses up into this area, to avoid a too dull grey and barren look. Also tomorrow, we plan to start working on the foreground and trees if we have time.

More Naturalistic Rock Cliff and Waterfall Area

I had been a little frustrated with this mural around the area of the waterfall and rock cliffs. Today however, we worked out all the things that bugging me about it. Before we had too many colors and the design rhythm in the rocks was too much the same, same, same. Now we have more natural looking shapes and they are blocked in with nice design rhythm. The neutral colors are much better. Now the stage is almost set to paint slivers of sunlight skittering across the top portion of the cliffs. On the staircase of cliffs behind the Waterfall, we added some alpine growth, bringing larger masses of some of this growth to it's base behind the line of aspen trees bathed in light. The large mass of trees grouped together kept the area from getting too busy and will add nice contrast to the aspen trees in front. Tomorrow, we'll add more dimension and form to this area and work on Roberts Point a little. Once we get the two main peaks and the waterfall area working well, the rest of the mural is basically just trees and rocks and should go much faster.

February 4th; Back to work on the MC Print Mural

We will be working on the MC Print Mural in the other building (the old MC Print Building) all next week. We were there painting today. We plan to be back on the Mountain Vista Mural the first Monday of the third week in February. See you then. Meanwhile, click on the www.novatekmcprintmural.blogspot.com link to check out how this project is coming along.

What Goes Around...

My wife Karen was sick yesterday and went to the Emergency room at Payson Hospital. It turned out she had what they call an Esophageal Spasm. Today I feel sick to the stomach, but I'm not going to the hospital. I just feel blaaa! Perhaps I caught some flu bug from my neighbor who is very sick with the flu at the moment. I hope it is just an acidic stomach and not a virus of some sort. In spite of how I felt, I got a lot accomplished on the Mountain Vista mural.

An Eventful And Stressful Day!

I took the bus to the project site this morning so my wife Karen could take the truck to work (We currently only have one vehicle between us). Karen needed to leave early for work and from work. I also got on the bus early AND IT WAS VERY COLD this morning. Shiver, BRRRRRR! I had a lot on my plate to accomplish today.

Things were going real good. I had begun to resolve some design issues I had in the rock wall area. Having the windows in the double doors created a real headache to design around and left some strong annoying diagonals---Bad design trap you want to always avoid. I played around with some fun rock cliff shapes which now looks much better. Turned out, he windows I guess were a good thing. They forced me to come up with a better design solution in this area than even on the original sketch.

Just when I was really in the painting groove, my wife called about noon, informing me she was on the way to the hospital. She was having some extreme pain in her esophagus and upper chest area. Since I took the bus, I had no way to get to the emergency room quickly, but I managed to find a ride about 30 minutes later from one of the employees who happened to be clocking out.

Before I left, I called a good neighbor (my home teacher) in Payson, Utah where we live, who said he'd check in on her. By the time I got there, Karen was just going in for a CAT SCAN. They were concerned that she might have had something like a Herniated Esophagus, but it turned out to be some sort of severe spasm in the Esophagus area, brought on by indigestion---not as serious, yet a concern. She went home about 2 hours later and was doing okay, so I went back to work.

When I returned, I noticed that someone had smeared some wet oil paint on the white wall at the bottom of a stairwell area. It was pretty obvious that someone carelessly forgot the paint was still wet!---(I use Classic Artist OILS). The individual got paint on his/her hand and wiped it off on the wall!

When I started the project, I put up caution signs on both sides by each door window, to watch their hands and shirt or coat sleeves as they pass through the door way. I finally remedied the situation by hanging rags on the door handles. No excuses now. I'm not worried about the mural getting smeared so much. I can fix that easy enough. I just don't want anyone to get paint on their clothes or leave paint fingerprints all over the building.

Mountain Vista Mural Starting To Get Fun

Although I paint a mural very much like how I would approach my easel painting, I sometimes get a little frustrated when It doesn't seem to go as fast. At times, it does feel a little overwhelming on a project larger and taller than eight or ten feet, but when color harmony, design and values start to pull together as a balanced unit, the feeling of more than you can handle begins to subside. Someone asked me today how the project was coming. I responded with, "Everything still appears to be in place and going in the right direction."

I actually covered about 32 feet of the foreground area, while modeling a few trees to the right as well as the rock cliff and a little on the waterfall. A good day in spite of the few hours spent. I had a doctor appointment this morning.