Color In Mar Vista
Discovery! Painted utility boxes in Mar Vista on Venice.
And a two-story mural. Just marvelous. Venice near Sawtelle.
Mock-ups and Murals…
Mock-ups and Murals…
It was great fun to teach a “mock-up to mural painting” program at the Montana Branch Library in Santa Monica this past Saturday.
We called it a
and attendees looked at a number of my live and in-person mock-ups (to-scale miniatures of planned murals), and images on my site of the finished murals.
Planning for Elders in the Central City
Exterior Mural done on fence 2 stories up, seen through kitchen window.
Garden mural done on patio fence.
We talked color, scale, technique, and then they painted their own mock-ups on project display boards. Big Fun!
The results were magnificent.
Each participant expressed her own style, color personality, and visual story.
What a privilege to work with these artists, and watch them express themselves in paint, color, line shape and imagery.
Gratitudes!
Beautify This
Beautify This
One a recent walk,I found myself at Lincoln Boulevard in Santa Monica, awestruck by a magnificent mural on the wall of a pho restaurant… Bowl Kitchen.
The mural was done through an amazing organization called Beautify Earth.
Specifically, “Beautify Lincoln“
The cafe boasts a garden in the back with seating…
Flanked by the magical mural…by “John Park Art“…as I understand it. Bravo!
Great Walls of Color
Great Walls of Color
I have been watching with interest the development of a magical mural being painted over the entire surface of an industrial-looking building at Broadway and Cloverfield Streets in Santa Monica,, rising like a multi-hued phoenix over the gray pavement.
Intense gradations of color flow over the building, which look airbrushed…spray-painted. This looks like the color foundation. The windows are protected by taped plastic.
Detail painted in representational style goes up over the rich hues. The building stands in stark relief to its surroundings. Is that a little girl painting the Broadway side wall?
Close..an image of one…realistically rendered, yet with a certain comic book illustrative feel.
The look of drips, air brush painting, gradated color softly shifting in value, and graffiti art combine to create something striking, all rendered in stunning color.
Masterful use and blending of color creates a vista of skulls which seem to incorporate elements of urban art and graffiti and intensify the feeling of a “dreamscape”, or landscape of dreams.
This magnificently adorned structure is now the stuff of dreams and magic, lifting us out of our daily reverie, and shocking us out of ordinary reality, into another order of being. Gratitudes to those that conceived of this gift, passed it through the powers that be, and made it happen. Thank you for sharing with us a true example of art’s transformative power.
Everything in the Garden: A Short Saga of Color and Light
Everything in the Garden: A Short Saga of Color and Light
Starting with a journey from the Inside Out…one extraordinarily light-filled early evening. Sunlight beckons.
Sunlight floods the garden, causing my camera to capture what just might be a mini-UFO, standing out rad against the green.
Catching the roses blushing against stucco. Compliments green and pink (“light red”) create old world charm.
Yellow windblown roses explode out of luxuriant green bushes. They seem to be reaching for something…moisture?
Red and white stripes hover shyly behind leaves.
A twist of tendrils around a solo pink blossom.
Pièce de résistance du jardin…perhaps its highlight….this perfect peach rose.
Fresh and cool, these beautiful whites light our way home like stars when the sun sets.
To the purple side of pink. These keep us in the Pink…and strike us pink at the same time.
Lines of moire…and shadow of palm fronds create optics on the wall…a trick of light, shadow, and the distance between things.
A natural mural composition. This arresting composition yearns to be painted.
Still Raving About Rivera
Still Raving About Rivera
Diego Rivera: Mexican Artist/Muralist
Born in Guanajuato, Mexico, December 8, 1886, died November 24, 1957, Mexico City
Diego María de la Concepción Juan Nepomuceno Estanislao de la Rivera y Barrientos Acosta y Rodríguez, known as Diego Rivera was a famous Mexican painter and the husband of artist Frida Kahlo. He is known for his murals painted in “Fresco” style executed in Mexico, as well as the United States. A mural is artwork painted or applied directly on a wall, ceiling or other large permanent surface, and as you can see, Rivera’s murals are huge, and very detailed, and designed to work with the architecture of the building they are part of.
Frozen Assets. 1931-32
Fresco on reinforced cement in a galvanized-steel framework, 93 ¾ x 74”
Museo Dolores Olmedo, Xochimilco, Mexico
When he very young (he begins to draw at the age of three), Diego Rivera loved to paint, so much that his father covered a room of their house in Guanajuato with paper so that the child could paint all over the walls. Diego says that it was in that room where he created his first murals.
Rivera received his formal art training in Mexico City, and in 1907, then studied in Spain, France, and Italy on scholarship. He returned to Mexico some fourteen years later, and along with the artists José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros, became a leader of the Mexican Mural Movement that became popular after the Mexican Revolution. His murals showed native Mexican culture and heritage, working people, and dreams for the future. Diego Rivera connected making art with history, technology, and progressive politics.
During the 1920s Diego Rivera helped to create nationalist painting style in Mexico called “Social Realism”, an international art movement made up of artists who show the poor and working classes, and whose artworks often criticize their living conditions.
“Part Of Diego Rivera’s Mural Depicting Mexico’s History”, 1929 – 1945
Also Called: “México en la historia, perspectiva: El campesino oprimido”, 1935.
Near Left Staircase. Palacio Nacional. Mexico City D.F. México. (Fresco)
His murals were painted in a Fresco (“FRESH”) style, using water and pigment, which creates color, on fresh wet plaster, so the painting becomes part of the wall.
“In his best mural paintings, he (Diego Rivera) merged past, present, and future into dense, crowded visions of an essential Mexico. He drew on Mexican history, folk art, the discoveries of archaeology and other sciences. He … made something that was not there before: a unifying, celebratory image of Mexico. In his art, he unified a people …. He said in his art: you are all Mexico.” –-George & Eve DeLange
Rivera’s murals were well-known in the United States by the late 1920s and he became one of the most popular artists in the US by the early 1930s. He was asked to create three murals in San Francisco, was invited by General Motors to create murals at the Chicago World’s Fair; and he painted murals at Rockefeller Center and the New Workers School in New York.
“The Making of a Fresco Showing the Building of a City”, 1931, fresco, San Francisco Art Institute. It is a mural about murals and because it represents Rivera and his assistants creating the mural itself.
Rivera was married three times — most famously to the painter Frida Kahlo.
“Retrato de Diego Rivera” / “Portrait of Diego Rivera” , by Frida Kahlo, 1937, Oil painting on wood
“An artist is above all a human being, profoundly human to the core…” –Diego Rivera
Letter to a Young Decorative Painter
Letter to a Young Decorative Painter
25 Years of Painting
Recently I received an email, the gist of which was the following:
Hello Debra,
I had an opportunity to view your website and I love your work. I commend you on your business. I recently began my endeavor in running my own decorative painting business, only to realize I have no idea what I am doing.
I have the creative background as well as sales background, but have no idea how to find clients. I was part of Home Adviser, but they have no real category for someone with my skills.
What advice would a creative mind and business owner as your self give a fellow creative mind? I was given the advice to contact someone who is in the same industry as myself from another city and ask questions, being that I am not your competitor. I look forward to your response.
Respectfully,
Rene
Now, I don’t know how old in human years Rene is, but I do know that he has just begun his professional journey as a decorative painter, and thus is a “young” one, in terms of business years!
Here is what I emailed back to Rene, with a few additions and modifications, to make it more useful for You. It was interesting to review what I have done over the years to create, sustain and build my business, and how much it does take! I realized this list could be valuable to just about anyone pursuing creative entrepreneurship…and entrepreneurship is always creative!
Hello Rene,
Here are my recommendations:
- Get a good Website, absolutely, to share and showcase your work.
- Start a Blog, focusing on the kind of work you would like to do, etc.
- Network with Interior Designers and Architects, as well as Painters, Paint Stores, and others in the Building/Built Environment field.
- Join a networking group, such as “BNI INTERNATIONAL“, (Business Networking International). (Google it).
- Take an entrepreneurship or business class, or whole program, and put together a Business Plan.
- Have a selection of good-sized Samples, depicting your strengths, and the kind of work you most like to do, most want to do, and from which you think you will get the most business.
- Create brochure, and a postcard, as well as a business card to go with your Site…they should all work together, as your business Visual Identity.
- Start an email newsletter, and start building your Mailing List.
- Put your card and brochure in Local Paint Stores.
- Selectively, Do Some High Profile Work, at a Reduced, or no Cost, for 1-3 Clients…to get your name out there, and showcase your skills and abilities. Have a party to celebrate it, at the job site if you can, when completed.
- Follow Online: Alyson Stanfield/Art Biz Coach, The Art Business Institute, Artists Who Thrive at Ann Rea Inc., Rebecca E. Parsons at her Artistically Speaking Talk Show on Blog Talk Radio, and Cre8tive Compass Magazine, and “HOUZZ“. You can Google and Facebook all of these to find them, and also “LIKE” them on Facebook. Read all posts, and save those that most apply to you and your work in an email folder.
- Get a Facebook Business Page, a Twitter feed, and a Linked In and Pinterest account, and keep up with them…interact and support others in related fields, and post many images. Share, support, educate, inspire and inform.
- Follow “Seth Godin“ for rich, daily doses information and inspiration. You can research his work through Google/Facebook. Sign up to receive his daily blog posts in your email inbox.
- Don’t get discouraged. Do something to grow your business every day, and keep plugging!
Here is how Rene responded:
Hello Debra ,
What it does in my opinion is simply show support that creative individuals as ourselves are willing to provide one another. I truly appreciate the advice, and I have already set up a meeting with a client to provide my services at little or no cost, simply to attract his high end neighbors. If I can ever be of assistance to you in any way, I would be happy to help. I thank you again and I wish you well always. I would love to share my work with you as well.
Respectfully, Rene
Have YOU ever looked back at all the things you have done, to establish, nurture, build, sustain, and grow your business? I am certain that if you make a list you will be amazed at all you have done, and at all it takes. I look forward to elaborating on mine, and going into greater depth with it, for myself and others. It’s a fascinating and rewarding process!
Here’s to all of You creative entrepreneurs!
Contemplating Work – Three Year Round Up
Contemplating Work – Three Year Round Up
In the spirit of the process of the necessity of the…well…updating, overhauling, revamping, refurbishing, and just re-ing the online presence of ArtiFactory Studio, and Artissima ventures….and, about to add/subtract/move around work from my site, I thought I would share some of the work completed since my last site update (yikes, was it really three years ago?), and look at some of the media, processes, forms and approaches that are part of the wide world of decorative painting.
I created a line of hand-painted light switch plates which I call, “Artissima Lumens“, which though small, do take a lot of work and focus to complete! Sanding the plastic or wooden surface, as well as screws/hardware, priming it, base painting it, and then…the embellishment, adornment, decoration (hmm…not a good word in art school!), whatever you want to call it. This can include hand painting images, gradating color, stenciling a design, pattern, image or scene, adding layers of semi-transparent glaze, and most often, a combination of some, many, or even all of these!
Mid-Century design, style, decor and imagery can be rich fodder for decorative painting on the wall, as evidenced by these bedroom accent walls. The dawn of the atomic age, coupled with star-bursts, floral imagery, and geometric shapes and patterns can be inspirational. These treatments, based on a sketch (above with mirror), made by, and a re-imagined image, (immediately above), found by the Client constitute a creative collaboration that bore Mid-C fruit in both a guest and master bedroom.
There is nothing quite like custom, hand painted imagery on a wall, or ceiling. Above, the Fightin’Irish and Michigan State logos find a home in the room of a young boy, with an avid avian interest. Custom-designed stenciled and hand-painted birds fly across his ceiling and desk wall, and perch above the entrance to his bath.
Stenciling, and the art of repeated pattern is an effective and beautiful way to create a border. Especially effective in a room, such as this bath, with no crown molding. The bright color ties the room together with the strong artwork displayed there, and connects to the vibrant colors seen throughout the rest of the house.
Exterior decorative painting on the wall, any wall, can go a long way towards brightening up an area that is often dark, and shrouded in fog, as many decks, patios, yards and porches are in the vast and often overcast Sunset District neighborhood of San Francisco. The painting of a colorful wall mural on the rough textured shingled siding of this deck not only brightened the area, and extended the adjoining living space to the outdoors, it also gave the inhabitants a colorful “garden” to look at through their kitchen window. Doing dishes is going to be a lot more fun now in that house!
“MINDS HEARTS HANDS VOICES” is the motto for Cathedral School for Boys in San Francisco. The painting of the motto so that is can be seen through the front windows communicated the basic approach and philosophy of the school. Samples of blue hues, and font styles were presented to the Headmaster and Development Director, who chose which to use. The intent was to keep the image and the message clean, clear and simple, albeit elegant, and let the words do the talking!
House numbers for HGTV Curb Appeal, “It’s All in the Details” episode were created with customized, hand-cut stencils, based on a font chosen by the host, John Gidding. Gradated shading using highlight and shadow was added to give the illusion of depth.
The Flying Cranes project at The Briggs Residence (a historic residence in the West Adams District of Los Angeles) was the brainchild of architect Kaitlin Drisko, of Drisko Studio Architects, who wanted to transform the living room TV cabinet into a work of art . In conjunction with the Owner, and Owner’s rep Paul Davidson, designs and imagery for both the interior and exterior were developed collaboratively. The exterior sides of the cabinet doors are gilded with composition gold leaf, or schlag metal, then painted with the cranes composition.
The interior of the doors are stippled with layers of gold, blue and red paint hues, then stenciled with a custom motif adapted especially for the project. When open, the articulated doors frame the TV screen. The piece is designed to be a focal point in the room whether the doors are open or closed, the television on or off.
It is fascinating to look back over a three year span of work, and contemplate all the uses of decorative painting. It is a form that marries function and beauty, usefulness and aesthetics, craft, visual art, architecture and design. Playing at once subtly and powerfully through our visual landscape, decorative painting makes its mark!
Looking Up: Griffith Observatory Murals
Looking Up: Griffith Observatory Murals
Heaven may be right there on the ceiling…or a bit of it, anyway!
A trip into LA’s Griffith Park, with the express intent of seeing the Hugo Ballin Murals in the W. M. Keck Foundation Central Rotunda of the amazing Griffith Observatory yields immediate results. If you would like to do this yourself…here are the instructions:
Walk into the W. M. Keck Foundation Central Rotunda of the Griffith Observatory, stand still, and look up. This is what you will see…
Turn your head slightly, and you will see a whole new view, and details that may have escaped your initial glance!
No delayed gratification here!
“On the vaulted ceiling and upper walls of the W. M. Keck Foundation Central Rotunda are Griffith Observatory’s greatest artistic treasure: the Hugo Ballin Murals. Workers have carefully and completely restored the murals so that they appear as they did when first painted by muralist, film producer, and author Hugo Ballin (1879-1956) in 1934-35.
Medieval cathedrals told stories in stone. The Ballin ceiling mural celebrates classical celestial mythology, with images of Atlas, the four winds, the planets as gods, and the twelve constellations of the zodiac. The eight rectangular Ballin wall murals depict the “Advancement of Science” with panels on astronomy, aeronautics, navigation, civil engineering, metallurgy and electricity, time, geology and biology, and mathematics and physics.
In addition to Griffith Observatory, Hugo Ballin’s murals also appear throughout Los Angeles in such noted buildings as the Wilshire Boulevard Temple, the Los Angeles Times Building, and Los Angeles City Hall Council Chambers.” —http://www.griffithobservatory.org/exhibits/brotunda.html
The joy is in the soft range of hues used, and the details, which combine to create a harmonious, yet thrilling whole, and complete the narrative.
The nearby fluidly shaped recessed ceiling is also highly ornamental, treated to what looks to be meticulously applied painted texture, or “paint effects“, a magnificent central floral/sunburst style image,
bands of architectural details gracing its curves, gold surfaced “dentils” , and repeated lines and shapes which, in concert with the color palette, tie it all together.
If all things Griffith fascinate you, may enjoy seeing this video on the Park, the Observatory, the Murals, and the man who started it all, Griffith J. Griffith.
Enjoy the view!
A Saga of Flying Cranes: Installed
A Saga of Flying Cranes: Installed
Last summer, I had the pleasure of meeting Kaitlin Drisko, principal of Drisko Studio Architects, known for “Integrating the new with the old…“
I was honored to be engaged to transform a custom-built TV cabinet designed for The Briggs Residence, in the Historic West Adams District. into a singular work of art, that would be the visual focal point of the downstairs of the house. Paul Davidson of Paul Davidson incorporated served as the owner’s liaison, facilitating and supporting every step of the project, from the initial inspiration, to the design phase, through the full-scale making process, to completion and installation of the piece.
Framed by the dentil-style crown molding above,
and the streamlined fireplace below,
the four articulated doors swing open from stippled side pieces anchored to the wall.
The inside surfaces of the cabinet doors are also stippled, then stenciled with a custom motif and variations, echoing other design elements in the room.
The stenciled pattern creates another frame when the cabinet doors are opened,
while the Flying Cranes add movement to the room when they are closed.
The transformed surface becomes a focal point for the room.
This project truly has been “A Saga of Flying Cranes” and a labor of love…
Gratitudes!
Artissima - Blog of ArtiFactory Studio 
