Silver Mirror

I painted this mirror frame last week, but didn't get very good photos of it during the process, so let's just cut to the chase, and show the final touch: applying the silver leaf.
The background on the frame is painted in shades of metallic silver, and the leaves and flowers , being non metallic, stand out sharply. It is a nice effect.














Silver leaf in very, very thin sheets is applied to a sticky surface, sometimes I use the traditional terracotta ground, which seems to add to the depth and brilliance of the leaf.
After it has set a while, the excess leaf is gently brushed away, with a soft brush. Too much brushing or too harsh a brush can scratch the silver, even right through.

I used many coats of solvent based varnish to give all the silver

an amber tint, and it makes the whole piece look aged and mysterious.

Delightful.

Cloud Treatment

Here is a good example of "Cloud Treatment" meaning that the clouds are a subtle effect, delicate and applied as a background, rather than a mural. They are less specific than one usually finds in my murals.

This technique provides for a soft airy accent wall, less demanding

than a full mural. Art can be hung on such a wall.

This wall makes you feel airborne.

Chinese Cloud Border

This dining room border is in the same home as the previous post's kitchen border.
The Chinese motif is in keeping with the oriental furnishings and decor .The ceiling light , with its alabaster shades, is on a dimmer switch, so when the lights are dimmed, the clouds look very mysterious and luminous. The whole thing is painted with metallic paints. A beautiful and exotic effect.

Tray Ceiling in Kitchen

Here is quite a change of pace!









After several projects based on realistic depiction of the natural world, here I have a purely geometric design project, with lots of beautiful metallic paints to work with.

These metallic surfaces are always so hard to photograph!
But the pictures here show quite well how gorgeous the ceiling and border turned out.

Mural Completed

Look! The Lagoon Mural is now completed!

Here are some pictures of the entire thing, showing the context.

One real significant change I made to the mural in the final days was to alter the formation of the sand bar, making the beach wider, and more sloping, and adding a cut, or Pass, out to the main water from the lagoon...It made a big difference in the composition and effectiveness of the sand bar as a point of interest in the middle of so much blue water.

Some how it made the scene look less claustrophobic.

There Is A Way Out!

And a Way In!

The electrical plug box is well camouflaged by the Chinese Hat bush.

More Critters....

This mural is almost finished.
The final touches include a few more animals, so that the place looks really inhabited!



Here is a serious looking Gopher Tortoise, lounging in the grasses just as the path starts up the slope....




I added some drama to the water birds' activities in the mural by adding this white heron just as he is nabbing some lunch. At least I hope he got some lunch. Sometimes ''lunch'' gets away...














Here is the close up of this spoon bill,
also possibly having a successful snack....















The scale of some of these details is tiny; these birds are only an inch or so wide.....to give an idea, notice the texture of the concrete....The detail you see here, in these close up photos, is almost not discernable with the naked eye, it's more like what you would be able to see with a magnifying glass.
(I don't paint with one by the way. Not yet!)













I am always pleasantly surprised when I look at these close ups, from my camera, to see the detail in the faces I was able to produce; its a mysterious process. I daub and feather around with the brush, never too sure if the eyes or the beak are really even legible to this degree.
It wouldnt really matter to the success of the mural. No one can see this!....However, here, and in other close ups on the blog, I can see that the tiny details were quite effective.. whether they can be seen or not!







Remember, if you click on the photos they get EVEN BIGGER!

more flowers!

Now some flowers..

Birds Arrive

Even though a lot of the mural isn't very detailed yet, I decided to start adding some wildlife now, that way I wont have to paint out nice plants to put in an animal later; so often I do that, and it's so foolish.



This is a little green heron. They are very secretive, and hang out in the grass, and under bushes, usually remaining hidden and low key.

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These are roseate spoonbills, They are stunning birds, quite large and eat by sifting through the water to catch small bait fish in their wide flat beaks.

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This is a little snowy egret. They are not shy birds and are a common sight on tropical roadsides (not very safe locations, sadly) and in people's gardens looking in ponds and puddles for stuff to eat, little fish, frogs and probably bugs too.

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Here are a couple of yellow bellied turtles sunning themselves on a log.

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In the late afternoon this mural comes alive with the red light of sunset. Its remarkable. It adds a lot to my painting!

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To see any image on this blog larger, just click on it!

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Tropical Lagoon Mural - todays work

Having received some expert meteorological
advice today, I changed the rainstorm
quite a bit...
compare it to yesterday's downpour!










I have also started to add the little distant details that flesh out the bare bones of a mural in progress.
Its very important to do the stuff in the background FIRST.
Trying to fill it in later by painting around a finished foreground,
with all of its details, is a recipe for bad temper.

Much as I would love to jump
straight to the up-close stuff I have planned:
birds, orchids etc -
I need to get the background in place and satisfactory-
including all clouds and rainstorms-
before I move on to the foreground
and even the middle distance.











I am painting on a fairly smooth cement screed,
but it still has its imperfections,
and cement is non- absorbent, requiring a certain build-up of
paint before things begin
to ''gel'' artistically.
Even then, the ridges and roughness of the surface can interfere a bit with the effect, depending on the light.

On the other hand, this is turning out pretty good, and I am very happy with today's work.

New Mural

Now I have started a new mural project . It is being painted on a client's patio, out of doors. It is a a beautiful location, right on the water, surrounded by orchids and the cry of sea birds.

Early days for this project; these pictures give barely a hint of what's to come.













It gets very bright and rather hot by 3 pm, so I am starting early in the morning, most days (!) and having to wrap it up just after 3 or 3:30, its just blinding there, in the afternoon sun. Mornings are very pleasant however.