GODZILLA MURAL STARTED OFFICIALLY TODAY!

After all this time and the big announcement that the mural we've dubbed as the GODZILLA PROJECT is coming up, we finally and officially started laying the design out today. I began by taking measurements and making a few marks in charcoal on the wall at certain important intervals. Then we began drawing in the mountain shapes from Timpanogos to Rock Canyon. After a days work, we managed to cover most of the mountain areas. The mural will span twenty-two feet high and run the full length of the north wall to two hundred feet. By Friday morning, the paint for the sky colors should be mixed and ready for me to start it blocking it in with an acrylic latex base coat. If the colors are mixed accurately, meaning they match the colors in the scaled sketch well enough, the base colors could easily become the final coat for the sky. If this is the case, it would save me a lot of time.

A few temporary employees who are on site working with other sub-contractors, wanted to be involved in the mural project and asked me today if I needed help. I guess my project looked like it would be more exciting to them than laying tile, plumbing or some other type of construction skill.  I tried hiring good help before, but unfortunately, it always turns out to be more of a baby-sitting job than saving time. If you don't know anything about mixing colors eye-ball, go find something else to do. This is not the kind of job you would enjoy. If you're constantly asking me what to do next, I wouldn't get any work done myself. I would have to always hold your hand. No time for that. What I do might look easy to some, yet  it takes years of training to scale up a design from small to gigantic and lots and lots of painting experience (I've been painting professionally for 30+ years). My skill set includes years of fine art training sign painting. I use a combination of both skills to paint my murals. I owe a lot to my late father who taught me the sign trade, then in his early forties, started a nationally advertised plein-air painting school he called Painting Vacations. Dad hired nationally acclaimed art instructors to guide and train artists from the beginner to the professional in painting from life or out in the open country side. This is where I learned my skill set and I was well trained before college age. Both Ricks College and Brigham Young University art colleges awarded me several studio credits because of the foundation my father provided. I will always be grateful to him for this upbringing.

When I painted the Inteliserv mural for Novatek in 2006, it took about four months to complete. I estimate the GODZILLA PROJECT will take five to six months to finish. It is sixteen hundred square feet larger than the Inteliserv mural. The two previous mural project I painted from January to June 7th of this year were painted in this six month period. Both of these combined is less than sixteen hundred square feet. One of those months set me back four weeks... I had contracted pneumonia. Realistically, I might be painting on the mural to Thanksgiving or into the month of December 2011.

I also have been plein-air painting in the afternoon. I am getting my portfolio ready for an opportunity in Scottsdale, Arizona next year. See you tomorrow.