A few years ago our town and (Carnegie) library received an Eccles grant to remodel the historic building.  I wouldn't say that it had fallen into disrepair, more just heavily in need of updating, because our town is crazy about it.  It has the distinction of being one of the two most frequented libraries in the country per capita.  That means we all use it. Along with all the obvious needs the library board thought it would be so great to include art in the remodel, and they discussed a large mural that would be placed above the main entryway.  They called me and I was instantly jazzed about the idea.  After a couple of meetings I began some preliminary sketches and grew more excited as I went along and began to develop ideas. 

     Sadly, it all came to a halt when engineers discovered more and more that would have to be brought up to code in the old library and many grand ideas had to be abandoned, including the mural.  

I shelved most of the sketches pinning a couple up on the wall in my studio so I could walk by and sigh at them like a love sick girl for the next couple of years.  I really wanted to do that piece.  I even considered doing it as a speculative piece with the hope of selling it when I was done, but that's a real crap-shoot because clients all have unique visions and motivations, and the bigger the piece the tougher it is to find a space that fits it just right.  Plus, I'd lose my house before it was finished.

    Finally, a few weeks ago while doing some boring sign design I looked up and the sketches caught my eye.  I was about to sigh when I had a thought.  I e-mailed my friend Paul Sweat who I'd worked with before at Wasatch School District on their Legacy Mural a few years back.  For an ex-jock he's got the heart of a poet and is a true patron of the arts.  Also, he has a rather cunning perspective on how art can influence children, hence the Legacy Mural, (see earlier posts) so it seemed a natural place to start.  I explained the project and asked if there might be a place in his district for such a piece.

   He responded immediately with a message that began with "Are you kidding me?!  We will definitely find a place something like this!"

    After looking at some of the designs I had in mind He felt like the Jr. High would be a better fit for the mural and since then I've been sending them a potential vignette' or two a week while they consider if it's something their going to do.  Unfortunately, I haven't heard from them for a few weeks and I'm hoping they aren't cooling to the idea.

It all started with this idea of a couple of kids I really liked.

And an environment that inspired adventure.  This was the original idea but it didn't provide enough space to convey a whole world, so...

I added a very deep area to the left including a lost city, forest and lake with waterfall.  Now possibilities abound.  Yeah, I know it's hard to make out, but this is just to help me work out proportions.  There's no point in developing it very far because the design will likely change a lot.  Fortunately, Paul Sweat and Justin Kelly (Jr. High Administrator) have great capacity for vision and comprehension that doesn't require me to spoon feed them every detail before they understand.  I've worked with actual Art Directors like that and it can be very discouraging.

The following are odd sketches,
 thumbnails and ideas for
 vignettes in the mural.

Back in Black

I'm not really in black.  I think it makes me look huge.  But I'm posting some of the stuff I've been working on.

                                                                     Midnight Book                                                              
                                                             Click on image to enlarge
I did a small commission in which one of the characters was wearing this quilt.  I really didn't get a chance to develop it and wanted to revisit it in earnest.  It was a fun study to do and I think I'm going to do another "quilt painting" at the bidding of my friend and colleague Dean Kleven.  For now it's just going to sit on the wall at my mothers gallery up in Heber until I get enough paintings together for my own show.  In real life I hate my cat but I like what he brings to this piece.  What you don't see are the 4 hands it took to hold him in position while I photographed him for reference.  He was ticked and still refuses to come into my bedroom, which is exactly the way I want it.

Fifty Films

5 days ago I got a call from Tom at Fifty-Films asking whether I had ever done any auto type painting.  I told him I had done a little and he asked if I thought I could do a custom paint job on an entire plane over the weekend.  At first I thought "no way" but the money was right, even after beating the next lowest bid by $500 and I'm not working on anything with a strict deadline so I thought I'd give it a try.  They needed me to paint a wrecked plane at a set in Salt Lake to match a sound plane they had filmed in Nepal.  The color references weren't great but after a few corrections I think it went great and they were happy with the result.

The wrecked plane before the matching paint job.

The sound plane in Nepal

The plane after the paint job.

I guess this weekend they're going to slam the whole thing into a hill side somewhere.  Oh well.

I like to paint for kids.  They're unapologetic for their enthusiasm and think that every stroke of paint is pure magic.  I've had a couple of opportunities to do work right in front of them in elementary schools and I never get tired of their questions and excitement.  Here are a few of the things I've done for kids.

This is my friend Jason Strate.  He was a technology teacher and JV football coach at the time.  He asked for permission to have something painted on the wall in his room and was denied.  So we did it any way.  He has since moved to Principal position at the middle school and this painting is still on the wall.  He's also shaved that goofy goatee.

This is one of the earliest and simplest pieces I've done.  

This one is painted in the school my wife Kay teaches. That's the school in the background.   They're the "Reading Thunderbirds"
Those are my kids on the back of the T-Bird, not Harry Potter.

This is my son's room.  We're plane enthusiasts.

One of the things I enjoy doing is art around town, mostly because I live in a town that really needs it.  We have an old-timey Main street with very old buildings, many of which have old fashioned wall adds that have long since worn away with the passage of time.  So, once in a while when things are slow,
(more often than I'd like) I'll do something around town in the way of redesigning and painting something true to period.

This is on the side of what the town now calls the "Pyramid Building".  Home of the town paper.  When first built it was...well isn't it obvious.  The bricks in this wall were in awful shape so I stuccoed it first and painted bricks back in around it.

Click to Enlarge
This and the next one are on an old garage in Fairview

You see them coming and going.

We actually have a Luthier in town.  (Violin Maker)  I've always wanted to do something like this on his shop and finally asked if he'd donate a wall.  I started this one last fall and got snowed out before I could finish it.  I'll get back and finish it when the weather cools off.  I can't wait to see it finished.

...he went out and began to publish it much...

Click to Enlarge

This is a piece I did this winter and I was pretty pleased with the results.  I've been thinking about the natural reaction some must have had to the savior's miracles.  I think we forget that miracles were as rare then as they are today and especially in the case of the healing of a leper, a man you might have passed many times on the street must have been a disconcerting thing.  Let alone what it must have been for the leper, to be redeemed from a literal death sentence physically and socially.

     As always, I probably bit off more than I can chew and there are a bunch of different reactions and stories in here if you look for them.

I started off with this very simple color sketch I did in the computer, working out the perspective, relationship of the main figure and the savior and other figures in the design, a basic color pallet.  yeah, those are photos of me on the left and my friend Dean Kleven on the right.  I don't develop things very far before I've made up my mind and just get started.

Then I photograph each of my models individually and place them in the composition.  If you look around I use the same people several times.  I figure that while I have them in the studio it's a good time to exploit them.  Anyway, this is where I work out a lot of the details and why I love photoshop so much- it probably saves me days of work.  

I then drew the piece on canvas from this finished composition and started painting.  In all I probably have a couple of months in this piece.

She's Crafty

My sister-in-law, Tanya, has begun a craft services business here in Utah.  She's a master chef, having been through UVU's culinary arts program and a successful actress as well, so it was a natural place for her to place herself;  catering for film production.  The only thing she needed to validate her as the premier craft service company in the area was a kick but corporate design.  I get a big kick out of creating new characters, so, I did this for her birthday.  The girl is modeled after Tanya with just a smidge of my mother.
     "Crafty" is the term people in the film industry use for whoever is providing the catering service on the set..."Who's crafty?" someone might ask.  "Oh, she's crafty." would be the reply.  So that's the name of her company.

Here's her business card.