Mural Work

I have away from my blog for awhile and I apologise. Last Sunday was the first day of the season for the Artisan Market in Ann Arbor, which I am now managing, and I was working to get ready for that. Then this week Lori and I had a mural job in Lake Orion (about 60 miles from here) which took us three days to complete, and I just didn't have the energy at the the end of the day to post.


So the mural that we did was in a downstairs lavatory, a small space to say the least and one whose biggest challenge was figuring out how we were both going to work in it at the same time. We managed, though, with the help of one of those multi-position ladders and a lot of patience.

The client had requested a forest scene, having seen our work at the Moose Tree Nature Center just down the road. Lori designed the mural to be a spring scene, and worked in the requested features.

It was difficult to get good shots of the space so I picked two primary directions to shoot from. Here is the sink area from outside the door, before we began...



...after day one...



And completed.


This is the area behind the toilet before...



...during...



...and after.



It can be difficult to leave a mural in its in-between stages when the client is going to see it. Some people don't understand how rough it looks when all you have in are blocks of color and no detail. These folks were great, however, and didn't seem the least bit nervous about what they'd gotten into.

The mural was primarily for the client's six year old daughter, who had some special requests:

Deer and ducks...


...a blue jay...




...squirrels...



and a pair of cardinals, "a boy and a girl" as she wrote in her note to us.



The job went well. I painted the birds (not bad for someone who rarely picks up a brush), Lori did the critters, and then I did the high stuff and she did the low stuff. I am quite pleased with the way this turned out.