Today I worked on a lot of little things that don't stand out but make a difference in the quality. First I lightened the horizon to make the hotel and tree line stand out from the sky. Then I added light and medium blue to the water, and finished the day defining the edges of the boats. After I cleaned up I wheeled the wagon to store it in my usual corner in the club house. When I got to the front door I discovered everyone was gone and the door was locked. I looked around and saw a few cars still in the parking lot so I knocked on the door. I put my face to the window, but everything was dark and nothing was moving. I had no choice but to load the wagon in the van and take it home with me.

I was interviewed for a story a couple weeks ago for a story in the Charlotte sun about the mural I am painting for the Punta Gorda Historic Mural Society. I didn't learn till yesterday that the story came out the day after Christmas. I was very pleased with the photo and the story.

 Today I worked on getting the oar in the foreground straight, increasing the contrast in the boat in the fore ground, sharpening the details in the hotel, and adding color to the trees and foliage to bring it "alive".

This morning I put together the top to use as a work bench at the Punta Gorda Mural site. It was much better than working off the ground. I worked mostly on the boat, the background foliage, and foliage reflection.

After the third day of painting on the Punta Gorda mural project, almost all of the mural has color. Now it is about refining the values, lighting some areas and darkening others, and adding detail.
My wagon has been working well moving supplies back and forth, but with all the paint it is quite heavy. I have to pull it down and up a large ditch, and pulling it up is quite a struggle. Tomorrow I am going to include a board that stretches across the top of the wagon to use as a table to work off from. Until now I have been taking the paint out of the wagon and setting it on the ground. It occurred to me  that a board across  the top will save a lot of bending over.

This is the Sculling mural after two days of painting. I have painted mostly dark and middle tones so far, but it is beginning to take shape. Some time over the weekend the Punta Gorda Historic Mural Society put up a banner in front of the mural site announcing the mural project as sponsored by the mural society. Next time I'll include the banner in the photo.

I spent last night building a frame to wrap around the Punta Gorda sculling mural sample so that I could cover the whole thing with plexiglass. That way I can draw a grid pattern on the face of the painting without damaging the painting. The plexiglass and frame also serves to protect the painting as I transport it everyday to the site and back. The frame also gives me a handy place to attach a handle.

This is a photograph of a photograph of a painting I did as a proposal for the sculling mural for Punta Gorda Historical Mural society. It was given to me to use as a guide for laying out the actual mural, but after I drew a grid pattern on it I realized that the photograph distorted the image by stretching it out horizontally on a scale of about four feet. I didn't notice it until I started counting out the squares and discovered there were too many. I arranged to get the original painting back, and looking at them side by side it was obvious, but not so obvious separately.

I bought this wagon a week ago to move supplies back and forth to the mural site for the Punta Gorda Historical Mural Society. When I walked to the site two days ago I realized that the banks were so steep that the wagon needed sides to keep things from falling out. When I got back home I started thinking about how I would go about building sides, and it dawned on me that I could incorporate  a sign. This is the result.
That is "Bootstrap Bill," my brother Tom's cat, under the wagon.

Day one of the Punta Gorda Murals

Finally after more than a year of waiting I am getting started on the first of four murals for the Punta Gorda Historical mural society. Today, in addition to painting primer on the wall, it was a day of familiarizing myself to the surroundings and the weather conditions I will be working under. The day was warm and sunny, hence the sunglasses. But of course once I start actually painting the mural the sunglasses will have to come off.

Laura's Mural

My 14 year old niece asked me if I would paint a mural on her bedroom wall. "Sure," I said," but you have to help." She was more than willing, and after changing her mind a couple times decided on a scene from her favorite movie. Together we worked for two days, six hours a day to complete the mural. The wall is textured making it difficult to paint on, but the final results made Laura smile, so all the work was worth it. Her and my name appear at the lower right corner. Here are the before and after pictures.

The Finished Mural

Bob was real happy with the finished mural. He said cars go by all the time and honk their horns and give him the thumbs up.

Motorcycle Mural in Progress

I began work on the mural this morning. The wall is a very rough texture and I quickly found out that lines drawn in pencil got lost in the shadows of the stucco. Luckily I brought my drawing box and found some red conti crayn to lay out the drawing. Even then it was difficult to see so I decided to paint the whole motorcycle in black and then go back and add color.
    The man in the photo is the homeowner, Bob. I had mentioned in my previous blog that I thought he didn't ride motorcycles anymore. I was wrong. When I arrived this morning his garage door was open and inside was a red Harley Sportster. I asked him when was the last time he rode it, and he said last week!
    I should be able to finish up tomorrow. I will add color and a shadow so it doesn't look like it's floating.

     My friend Chris called the local newspaper today and asked if they were interested in doing a story on the mural. They asked me to send a press release, and indicated they would be sending a reporter. So I may be interviewed tomorrow.
   The temperature today was around 80, sunny, with a brisk wind. My paint was drying before I could get it on the wall, and even though the sun was to my back and I was wearing a wide brimmed hat, my face is a little sunburned. It must be the light reflecting off the wall. This has been a good exercise before starting the Punta Gorda murals. I'm getting a taste of the challenges I'll face painting larger murals in harsher  circumstances.

Motorcycle Mural

While waiting to get started on the Punta Gorda mural project my brother Tom told me a friend called him  to ask me about painting a mural on his house. Bob is a great fan of Tom's music. I had met him at a bar Tom was playing at, and I met him again at his home when he hired Tom and the band to play at a party at his house.

   Bob is an older man who has lived alone since his wife died. He has a great love of motorcycles. I don't think he rides anymore, but he has three old motorcycles displayed in his home like sculptures. But unlike sculptures they are working motorcycles as he pointed out to me when he started one up in his family room.
   Bob opened a book of Harley motorcycles and said he would like this motorcycle painted on the back wall of his house. I said,"Sure I can do that." and a deal was struck with a hand shake.
  I took the book home to make some sketches. Leafing through the book I saw many classic and customized motorcycles that seemed a more worthy choice to be painted on his wall.  But this one perhaps has some significance to him. He wants to put a fresh coat of paint on the wall before I start painting, so it won't be until next week that I can get started.

Past Mural Proposals

The last time I talked to Kelly from the Punta Gorda Historical Mural Society I asked her where the mural proposals from previous murals were and if they can be seen. She told me they can be seen, and most of them are displayed at the convention center in Punta Gorda. So last week with camera in hand I went to see how other artists approached making a mural proposal.
   When I arrived at the convention center I walked down the main hall and peeked in the main events room, but I didn't see any drawings. So I backed tracked to the office I passed at the front. There in the office I noticed two framed paintings which I recognized were paintings of murals I have seen in the streets of Punta Gorda.
    The first thing I noticed is most of them were on paper with water based paint in contrast to my origional proposal of a  black and white pencil drawing. It makes sense to use color in the proposal. I guess I went with what I was most comfortable with. I haven't had a lot of experience painting on paper so I drew the best black and white drawing that I could. In the end the Mural society wanted to see it in color, and again instead of painting it on paper I went with what I know, and painted the proposals on canvas.

    One of my favorite murals is the one about the history of the Movie theater with Charlie Chaplin on the screen at the left, and a poster of Roy rogers on the right. It must have been a big favorite of the mural society because it was painted twice, once by John Gurcher before the hurricane of 2004 and again after the hurricane by Michael Vires at a different location just outside the convention center. I like the whimsical quality and how it bursts out of the movie film  frame. The quality of the design and draftsmanship are excellent.
    The movie theater painting wasn't the only mural lost in the 2004 hurricane. Several others were lost and painted again, usually by the same artist. In this case John Gucher was no longer alive to repaint it.
   There were many more proposals on display at the convention center, but not all of them. Kelly told me that there are a few of them located in the Court House but I didn't get over to see them.

Punta Gorda Mural Location

I took a ride on my motorcycle to the sight of the new murals I will be painting in Punta Gorda. This building is south of the inner city on Highway 41. It is a tennis and health club with tennis courts outside and workout machines inside. It is called Punta Gorda Club. The murals will be painted on the east wall surrounding the tennis courts at the rear of the building facing 41. The wall, as seen in the photos,does not run in a straight line. There are four panels that are offset. It is on these offset panels that the murals will be painted. I was told there was some complication about the tennis mural because the mural might be seen as a sign advertising the Punta Gorda tennis Club. Though Kelly, from the mural society, didn't seem too worried about overcoming that glitch in the process.
I can't begin painting the murals until the money is raised to pay for them. Hopefully by spring so I am not painting under the sun in July. There is a fundraiser planned on Feb. 16, at the convention center in Punta Gorda. There will be a live band and dancing, so if you are in SW Florida on Feb. 16, come on out and help the cause!

Revised Tennis Mural Sample

About a week after I handed over my paintings to the Punta Gorda Historical Mural Society I got a call saying the members loved the colors in the paintings except some of the members thought the shadow in the tennis painting was hard to read, and the main player was too dark. She asked if I would have a problem making those changes.  I said I wouldn't mind making the changes but the reason I made him dark, under a shadow, was symbolic. I told her that in my research on Bill Tilden, who the society directed me to depict, I discovered things about him that I thought should put him under a shadow. When I told her what it was, she seemed to catch her breath and thanked me for my willingness to make the changes. She said someone else would be contacting me about getting the painting back. Several days later a time and place was arranged to pick up the painting. He said was that I was to keep in mind, even though the painting depicts Tilden, the mural is mainly about the sport of tennis not an individual player. The point is that professional tennis got it's start in Punta Gorda when the historic Hotel Port Charlotte built the courts and helped organize the matches.   To be honest, I like the revised painting.

                                                                                                                                     

                           

Finished Mural Samples

They are due on Friday, and here I am on Wednesday at 10:00 pm, and I can say I have nothing to do! Oh, I will probably see something to touch up, but they are signed, and I contacted The Punta Gorda Historical Mural Society and arranged for them to be delivered tomarrow, with one day to spare.
If you look close at the frame you will see three bands of color. The inner band is dark brown, followed by a light band, and then a medium brown on the outside. Early on I knew I would use masking tape to paint those long narrow bands of color, but the problem was how to mask it off without having to re-mask for each band? My solution was to first separate the main painting from the frame by masking around the interior of the frame. Then I would paint the whole frame the color of the light band. After the paint dried I would put a 1/4inch wide strip of masking tape 1/8inch from the inner edge of the frame. That would leave me with a narrow strip to be painted dark and the outside to be painted medium brown. All I needed was 1/4 inch masking tape.
I got on my motorcycle an headed out on a mission to find my masking tape. Home Depot is just down the road, they didn't have it. Ace hardware in Port Charlotte didn't have it. They suggested an automotive paint store, but didn't know where one was. The Sherwin Williams paint store didn't have it, but suggested the automotive supply store just down the road. They didn't have it.

I went to Michael's art supply and found in the stencil department, Martha Stewarts narrow masking tape to make plad designs. It was kind of pricey so I thought there might be more tape of another brand in some other department. I asked a women who works there if she had any narrow masking tape. "How narrow?" she asked. "One quarter inch." I said holding my thumb and index finger to the narrow space of 1/4 inch. "No," she said, "we don't carry that."I just rolled my eyes and went back to Martha Stewart.
It was a challenge to finish on time. Several days I worked into the late evening. But I'm happy with the result and  I can't wait to start working on the four walls of the final murals.