Tuscan Garden Mural - Sketches for the Client

I was hired to paint a Trompe-l'oeil mural in my clients backyard on a garage wall facing their garden. Trompe-l'oeil  is French for 'trick the eye'. For those of you who don't know, it's a style of painting that creates an optical illusion, a three-dimensional, realistic image.

They just finished a 4-year remodel project on a beautiful house in Sacramento and they want a Tuscan countryside mural to finish off the garden. Here's a couple sketch options I showed them. What do you think?

 Click on the images to see them bigger. These are the two options for inside the arch, the center piece of the mural . If you click the links below, you can see the whole mural.

http://www.griffmobile.com/muralsketches/tuscanoutdoorgarden1.jpg

http://www.griffmobile.com/muralsketches/tuscanoutdoorgarden2.jpg

Magical World Mural - Clouds, Forests, and the Sun!

Here's a couple photos of my progress so far. I've got the major work for the clouds, hills and sun done. I'm currently working on the forest.

I thought things were moving along nicely, considering time restraints, but I realized when I start getting into the smaller details, it will actually take more time. This is where loosening up my style to be more simple and bold on mural details (since they are meant to be looked at from across the room) might come in handy.

Illustration Friday - Detective

Look closely - sometimes even the smallest voices have something important to say!

Scary Dinosaurs on the Wall!

The first round of dinosaur sketches for this little 3-year-old boy were just not scary enough. I was going for cute dinos, but I guess I underestimated the bravery of this little boy!

He wanted a bunch of different dinosaurs, so his parents hired me to paint 4 vignette scenes around his room. I don't know much about dinosaurs beyond "Land of the Lost", so I had to find some good references.

He has a pretty big room, so the T-Rex almost takes up a whole wall. It IS one of the biggest dinosaurs!

His mom told him he had to stay out of the room, but he couldn't help himself from coming in and checking on my progress, telling me about dinosaurs. His knowledge was impressive!

It's good to know I made a dinosaur expert happy.

The Magical World Mural - Background Progress

Here's a quick post about the progress of BeaBug's magical world mural. There's going to be a lot of stuff going on, so I may have to thin it out as I start painting. Since it's a personal project (non-paying work), it's going at a slow, but steady pace. With an active 2-year-old,  I can only paint when she's sleeping, or occupied with Dad.

So far, I'm using latex paint, with large paint brushes and rollers. When I start getting into the details, it will be more acrylic and latex mixes.

I wanted the bottom of the wall to be simple since most of it will be covered by furniture.

I have one corner that is a evening scene, so I went with a purple-pink sky, like just after the sun goes down.

I blended it with a paint brush into the blue. The edge might be a little harsh in places, but it will be covered by either clouds or trees.

On to the next step! With the background painted, now I am drawing the scenes on the wall. I think it's going to be a combination of freehand and tracing using the projector.

Ilustration Friday - Rescue

Hi Everyone! It's my first IF illustration, even though I've been thinking about it for a long time. I had a lot of fun painting this little bird who needs rescuing from a tree top, hee hee.  Let me know what you think, comments are welcome!

P.S. Does anyone else have a Canon MX310 scanner/printer? I'm still having trouble getting my scans to look good. I have to do some color adjustments and I just don't think it does the original artwork justice.