Another fun request from a client!! Who knew Octopi could be so colorful, changing colors like a chameleon. This Caribbean Octopus is painted on the slats on the top level of a three shelf shoe rack. I eased the color down the sides of the slats so that even viewed from an angle the picture is continuous. Final destination of the piece is a summer home in the Caribbean, how perfect!
This unusual request came from a Jimmy Buffet fan. There are two each of these themed, denim, director’s chairs. One set of chairs is themed “Cheeseburger in Paradise” and sports a whimsical cheeseburger ‘lounging’ on a beach chaise. The Parrot is a favorite Buffet symbol and I painted each seat with a slightly differently angled bird. A faux ketchup packet is painted on the arm rest. The other set of chairs is themed “It’s Five O’clock Somewhere”. One of the Five O’clock chairs has a yellow Hibiscus, the other a pink Hibiscus. On the arm rest is a fool the eye cocktail umbrella. Various cocktails share the back rest with a Bird of Paradise. The title of each chair is painted on the rear.
Harness Park on the Connecticut shore was the inspiration for this intense, hyper-realism mural, a most ambitious project. I painted it on the wall of a small breakfast nook, creating the sensation of a garden being accessible right from the kitchen. In preparation, I took photos from all over the park and worked them into an imaginary ideal garden. I painted the path and the base board to match the real stone tile floor. The real gate you see is an antique wrought iron piece that the owner of the mural eventually attached to the wall so that it could swing open in welcome. The balance of the design is completed by the gate.
Many of the photos posted here were taken while the mural was in progress and you can discern my process in some of them. If you look close you can see differences between views such as unfinished edges, butterflies that were added last and white spaces for the Peonies which were not yet painted. Unfortunately these photos were taken in the days before I owned a digital camera, so I apologize for some fuzziness.
This little child’s chair is painted as if it were a mural. The chair belonged to the client who gave me free reign to do whatever I wanted and this was the result. The beach scene wraps around all surfaces of the chair. The light house is a famous one, I am sure you recognize it. The model for the hyper-realistic copper sand pail was a miniature pail that I stuck into rice to capture the look I wanted. The seagulls were taken from photos a friend took at the beach. The sand castle which I painted on one of the sides was a particularly difficult challenge.
