Finished Mural Painting Italy

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

So, on Friday afternoon I returned to Caprese Michelangelo, east of Arezzo, in the lovely Italia. I worked on as much of the acrylic painted mural as I could finish that evening, making corrections that could dry fast on the figures, creating light areas in anticipation of oils. That night around 2 a.m., I applied acrylic varnish on the entire mural. As Sandro Zecchi, of Zecchi’s Art Supply in Firenze, Italia recommended to me, I used a mixture of half glossy and half mat, mixed with a wee bit of water.

Saturday, I got an early start on the oil painting part, namely the figures. My friend and mural teacher, Victor Goikoetxea, came over and took a quick look at the Michelangelo Museum on the top of the mountain. Then he joined us for dinner at La Buca di Michelangelo before heading off to his own space in the Tuscan countryside.

I ended up working after dinner until 4:30 a.m. Saturday night. And Sunday, I started up again around 9 a.m. and this night I never went to bed. Because of the scheduling of my ride to Arezzo to catch the train, I had to be finished with the mural and packed up, ready to go by 7 a.m. Those who know me well know that I love the mornings, but not after the nights. And the night always gets first dibs on my attention.

However, I got my second wind about 5 a.m. after taking a break to wander out in the moonlight to pick and eat some grapes an hour before that. I finished almost everything, except the flowers on the two potted plants, some minor details in the figures, and also, I had intended to put a nude man into the hole behind the real wooden window. Equal rights, you know, but also as a gift for the woman of the house. But that will have to wait until spring since my friends are leaving Italia soon.

Here are the images I took around 6 a.m. today. One is the view from the door on the left as you enter the room; the other from above the center of the Jacuzzi. I hope you like my mural. It is approximately 200 x 400 cm. I, for one, am pleased with my first mural (as an adult), but exhausted.

Please feel free to leave a comment on my blog entries, if you feel so inspired. Thank you for sharing my artistic journey with me!

Pool in Perspective Figure Painting Mural

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

There were many changes that happened during the process of actually painting my mural. Today I will talk about expanding the pool in the mural design. Having decided on the size of the woman wading in the pool, I just felt that the perspective was either not working or the pool just seemed too small.

Even though acrylic paint dries rather quickly, there are still degrees. It is a bit of a finicky material. So, a lot of how I have gotten done this much this quickly is because I paint on one area and then leave it to go work on an entirely different area. I suppose my experience as a production supervisor in an imaging and duplication lab many years ago helped hone my skills for organization. Once I understand how something works, I plan accordingly to make all the steps possible weave together to meet a deadline. That means that I do not follow the usual sequence of events, knowing that if I can start one section drying before choosing to work on another, I can return to the first area with fewer problems and keep the flow going. I hope that makes some sense.

The first image shows how easy it is to lengthen the pool. One-point perspective gets easier once a few key point / lines have been determined. So, I simply extended the lines reaching to the vanishing point. And then I painted a solid, opaque color on the edging of the pool. This is to help me see the new pool size and how it relates to the figure. It also insures that I do not get confused on which area was travertine tile and which was pool border.

I include this second image so that you may see what a narrow space I am working in. The Jacuzzi is not even a meter away from the wall.

This last image shows the preparation I am making to allow for transparent water in the pool. You may see the round step “under the water.” The light source or sun is coming from the right. (I chose this side because there is a wide vista window on the wall that is adjacent to my mural. It seemed natural to have the light coming from the direction that real light enters the room. The step gets the most light since it is higher than the pool floor and a horizontal surface that gets more light than most of the vertical planes. I want this area totally dry and set before adding water around the figure.

You may see in this last image that I am doing the same process with the large tree on the right. I have painted the branches that may show in the final painting and I wanted the paint to have LOTS of time to dry. Later I will add foliage and allow that to dry. Lastly, I will paint the flowers. So, in a sense, I am working the whole painting “at once,” as I do one of my fine art paintings.

Figure Painting Mural

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

Hmmm, I have been struggling too much with painting figures with acrylic paint. It dries darker and slightly redder and FAST. So, I tried the idea of painting the shadows in one color and the lights in another. Then I work the transition between tones. In a smaller area such as the transition, I hoped to be able to work fast and keep soft edges.

Still, it has been a struggle for me and I have not been happy with the result. I had been working on this mural from a day that started around 8 a.m. through the entire day, usually going to sleep around 2 a.m. I was slowing down mentally at a time in which I needed to be the sharpest.

Today, I saw my friend Victor, the muralist, and he told me that he only does a tonal value of human figures in acrylic. Then he switches to oil! Sheesh! I left Caprese this past Sunday morning and returned to Firenze. However, I am going back this weekend to fix what I do not like, as well as create what there was not time to finish.

Here are a few more work-in-process shots, including one of some visitors to my “temporary studio.”

Thanks for reading! My book about my street painting in Italy is now available in Amazon.it in Italy, as well as other European Amazons. Check it out on Amazon.it. They even allow you to see some of the inside pages!
You may also order a signed copy directly from me (no extra charge for the inscription) and I will get you a shipping quote from Italy. Contact me directly, please.

Mural Frisket Figure Painting Italy

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

Mural making is a bit of a different process than my street painting and my fine art painting. Funny how you learn the strengths and process of each system and make it work out all right, even sometimes mixing the things you learn from each different form of art and hopefully making all of your work stronger.

In mural painting, the environment is created first and then the figures are placed inside of it. [In street painting, one usually starts with the face and works out, so as not to step on the art. In my fine art painting, I work the whole composition, bouncing all over to develop the work in a consistent way.] However, speed and efficiency are qualities one strives for when working in the client’s space. It lessens the distraction factor for all lives involved. Thus, most of the work for my mural project here in Italia was done in my own studio in Firenze, Italia, or on the plane, bus, or while walking somewhere. Constantly thinking I am, and compositional “problems” must be solved, as well as keeping to one main idea. Too much of anything usually confuses and tires the audience.

Because of other things going on in my life, my prep time was quite diminished. I did not have time to draw from a live model, always my preference. Thus, I had to work from digital images from a model and her photographer that I hired. Most of the summer, I was not in the same country as she, so logistics meant that I could not even shoot my own images. None-the-less, I work with great people and I cannot believe how easy it all went. Even after I drew the mural on the wall, I discovered that I needed a reshoot of the woman in the pool. I realized why the image I had was not working. It has to do with perspective. But I received a new image the next day, gratefully! Because of the short turn-times, I think these figures look more like photographs than I hope my normal work does.

As in street painting, I gridded out my figures, only this time onto a transparent paper. This is so I can move the paper around on the scene I have created on the wall and see where the figure on the paper looks best before I draw her into the painting. Sure, I know generally where I want each figure, based on my Bozzetto (small drawing), but my bozzetto in this case was one-tenth the size of the wall. No doubt, mathematical errors will be found simply in the enlarging process. My client and I actually had several fun discussions on how we wanted to change things that just did not look or feel right, regardless of the logic we saw in the perspective work. I have to admit that I really enjoyed our dialogues, especially when I reworked the pool a couple of times.

I admit to being lazy at times. So, while I drew in the outlines of the ladies, I decided not to bother with a precise frisket when I drew the woman in the pool. Frisket is basically a masking material with adhesive on one side. It is designed to protect an area from receiving the treatment given to surrounding areas. I used to use a special kind back in the early 1990s when I did restoration work on 4 x 5 inch film transparencies. I am not crazy about using friskets because I do not like the hard edge they always leave. However, this is how it is done and I did not have time to come up with a preferred method. The main point is to not have landscape showing through underneath my figure. Acrylic paint does not have to be opaque, although it does not become less so with time, as oil painting does.

In these next three images, you may see how I tried to minimize the edging by taping INSIDE my figure outline. I must have been drinking too much wine or liquor that night or was simply really tired when I masked the right hand. The rectangular tape shape tells me that I probably just forgot to cut away the tape outside of my line. That slowed me down a bit as I had to paint with extra care the faux stone floor behind the hand. It is so much easier to paint with abandon to get the strokes moving freely right up to an edge, and then remove the tape for a lovely look!

The last image today is a horrible work-in-progress of the third woman in the scene. While my model Anna Rosa posed for me, I had decided to change her face and turn her into a redhead. I also was inventing the clothing and lighting on the torso, since she had posed wearing a short dress. In addition, I used a photo of me taken in San Sebastian, Spain, as a reference for a more horizontal forearm position. I still have work to do on the redhead.

Thanks for reading! My book about my street painting in Italy is now available in Amazon.com in the US, as well as in several European Amazons. Check it out on my home page for an easy link; Amazon even allows you to see some of the inside pages: http://borsheimarts.com/ You may also order a signed copy directly from me (no extra charge for the inscription) and I will get you a shipping quote from Italy. Contact me directly, please.

Tuscan Mural Painting

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

     I have been working day and late evenings on this mural, with little time to write. I have been changing things a little as the mural painting progresses here in Caprese Michelangelo (east Tuscany), Italy. I include a few images here, with others being posted on my professional page on Facebook. If you click “LIKE” I believe you will receive updates of images in your Facebook newsfeed. Here is that link:
Facebook: Kelly Borsheim, Sculptor Page

     Back to work for me. I have started the figures today! Oh, for art techies, I am using Zecchi’s and Maimeri brand of (Italian) acrylic paint. Sandro Zecchi has become a friend and he and his staff were very helpful in helping me get what I need for this project. Grazie a tutti!

Happy birthday to two special people in my life: Lei and Bethany! You are both so lovely and true.

Tuscan Trees in Mural

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

I have got trees now in my mural project! And they are not all bad . . . it is a start, anyway: One foot in front of the other. Well, now that it is behind me, I can confess that on the 14th, I lost my confidence. I am not sure why then, but . . . yes, I am. For all the preparation work that I did with perspective and composition decisions, once I got the enlarged drawing on the wall, it either was not what I thought I had designed or it was simply wrong; it did not work.

It is amazing how similar and yet how very different mural painting is from street painting. When I was street painting, people often asked me if I could do a large painting on canvas. “Sure,” I said, “this is what I do.” But when I quoted a price, many were stunned. Why would it be “so high” and take “so long” when I see you in the street recreating the Mona Lisa large, in one day, working for tips? Well, I do not mean to get off on a rant here, but basically, I was making temporary art on the street and a copy of someone else’s design. And while I always try to do a good job, street painting is more a performance art than it is fine art. I do not mean that in a negative way, by any means. I mean that I have a relatively short deadline and my main goal is to make an impression with a very large image during that time. Impress you. That is the goal of a street painter. Spettacolo!

Yes, of course I want to impress people with all of the art that I make. However, when I have time to design something and make it last, it is a whole other ballgame. There are other ways in which to impress. Yet there I was, standing before my work and not happy. I had redrawn the first figure because she just looked too small. And eventually did the same with the distant figure. And then, two days ago, I realized that the middle figure would not work at any size because the viewpoint to the model was wrong. She is below me (as viewer) and thus, my reference from my model must reproduce that viewing position.

I used to exhibit a terrible temper. But I have worked on that over the years because I did not want to be that person. I now tend to turn my anger inside and I am not too kind when I am angry with myself. Was mine an error in calculations (which I should know better!) or was I simply experiencing my first mural project and learning that theories are one thing, reality quite another? Harumph! Lucky me. Having a better understanding now of myself, I know that this love-hate thing is often a part of each creation. (Whew!) This is because I am trying something new with each artwork, even if it may not look like that to you.

Frustration turns to anger; anger to depression and lost confidence. I know that in this case, I was also feeling overwhelmed by what I wanted to accomplish, with a few voices telling me that I would not be able to do this project by my deadline. First step: breathe. Second: Slow down and take time to think about what needs to be done and in what order. Do not run. Walk. It is a tortoise-and-hare thing and progress is progress. I needed to stop thinking about being “forced” to move fast (not my forte), and get back to thoughts of making something worth seeing, regardless of deadlines.

So, I contacted my model and arranged to redo the pose for the figure I needed. In mural painting, unlike street painting, I must create the background first. I also need to create the scene before adding the figures into that scene. However, their sizes and placements help me determine other compositional elements in the whole work. That is why muralist Victor Goikoetxea told me that one always fully designs the mural before any of actual artwork gets done. There is none of this, “Let’s see where the artwork takes me” kind of thing possible in most other creative endeavors.

Allora, two days ago was a frustrating, but necessary part of this project. Today, the work is stronger; the figures sized into place. Yesterday, I got what I needed from the model, the lovely Anna Rosa. I also painted the first layer of the background. And I painted trees! I have another day at least ahead of me on the landscape, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. And as they say, “Let us just hope it is not the train.”

If you have followed my career much, you will remember the name of master sculptor Vasily Fedorouk, who was my friend and mentor. Sadly and suddenly, we lost him just over three years ago. His wife Dilbara and I have remained good friends and now she is prepared to sell a selected few pieces of Vasily’s artwork. I will be announcing these pieces, with their prices, in my next art newsletter, which will come out later this month or early October, once I have finished my mural project. If you would like to be one of the first to receive this information, please sign up for my art newsletter. You may preview past newsletters on the following page, if you like: http://www.borsheimarts.com/newsletter.htm