Wish all of you could have made it, but Charlie, Eric, Shorey, and everyone else at Pacific Foundation Services sure did pull off a great reception last night. We already had an unveiling of the mural when the scaffolds came down, but last night was the first time many friends of mine were able to see the mural. Click on the image above to see it better!
Afterwards, folks came over to our apartment & kept the party going. At one point, we all gathered round my Mac & watched this... Doncha just luv this internet thing-a-ma-jig?
Had an "unveiling ceremony" when all the scaffolding was completely gone today. I asked Charlie if the shades in the PFS conference room can stay closed while the scaffolding was being taken down. So, as soon as I let Charlie know that the guys were done, he gathered everyone together, then he and Mary opened the shades while everyone in the office cheered as the mural was revealed for the first time. That sure was fun! Click image below to see what happened: Here it is, folks, after all these weeks, I present to you the Pacific Foundation Services mural... See it up close by clicking on each pic: Phew! Deo gratias.
There were only these 3 guys to break down the scaffolding & haul it away. It took only 3 'coz this one guy alone was carrying 3 to 4 planks at a time! I can barely carry 3 thoughts in my head at the same time let alone carry 3 of those heavy planks!
Opening Reception Dec. 10, 2009 Thursday 4:30pm - ? The PFS office Hey, if you're around town that time, come by for a little opening shindig for the mural. Let me know if ya can make it! If you can come, maybe there'll be some dancing like this...
Managed to download from my cell phone last night views of the top deck of the scaffolding...minutes before I left it for good the other day. Tried to do that artsy, David Hockney-ish collage of a landscape... OK, I know cell phones don't do great deep focus landscape shots, but that's all I had that moment...besides a mixed salad of nostalgia, fear of heights, and tiredness (don't know what's a good dressing for this combo!)
Asked Eric to take a shot of me right on the scaffolding on my very last day on it...
It was like saying goodbye to your old classroom that you spent so much time in - only if your classroom was 4 stories up, on some planks that bended ev'ry time you took a step on them, and shook on its metal pole legs whenever you moved a muscle - yikes!
Thanks to my Guardian Angel who I called on every time I climbed up that thing. Even he was sweating when he was up there watching my back. Now he's got the best agent in the business 'coz there wasn't a single time did anything a shade of dangerous happen while I was up there. Not even one missed step or turn! Oh, btw, my Guardian Angel looks like the angel Clarence from "It's a Wonderful Life" - but Filpino!
Things I did today: Painted top of fence in front of mural Cleared all my gear off the scaff Flew down with wings I made out of drop cloth.
That mural's got more coats on than what I've got on my coat rack at home! Not much fun reporting about a whole day of brushing on the varnish by hand, except for the fact that I had Pat Morita as Mr. Miyagi doing his "Brush up/brush down" shtick stuck in my head.
Anila took some shots when I first started and here is how the final mural looks like in the daylight, before the varnish.
The varnish didn't add a gloss sheen to it, but it sure did help bring out the colors! With the recommended 4 coats of the stuff, I've been told that the varnish is super tough - deflects harmful sun rays with its UV protection muscles, defends color brightness from the ravages of Time, and it even has secret ninja anti-graffiti powers!
After I finished the last coat on the upper deck of the scaffolding, I gave a final appreciative glance of the view from up there. I have no reason to go back up there now, so I had to have one final look. Even the barking dog from a nearby building made an appearance and he made it known that he still didn't like seeing me up at his level! But the view of a San Francisco sunset over City Hall, the Bay, and downtown I know you can get from any high rise apartment in the area, but not necessarily when you're on top of 4 stories of scaffolding & covered with paint.
Well, I promised you, dear friends, a picture of me with Rene's harness on and Anila was able to take this shot. I crammed all-night for final exams in college for this?
Well, dear friends, as I write this, the last brush stroke of the PFS mural is drying quietly and nicely. Ladies & gentlemen, it gives me great pleasure to announce that I have just finished painting the mural this very evening - roaring crowd & blaring trumpets!
Saved the best for last...the bubble-blowing girl was one of the last major elements I painted. She's the corner stone of the whole mural, so she's kinda important in the grand scheme of things. Figured a week or two of painting on the wall and my hand would be warm enough to paint this image just right. At the start of painting the girl, I heard one of the windows open up behind me and it was Charlie himself, at PFS on a Saturday afternoon. He let me know of a recent feedback that the kid who's being read to by the dad should have a chin line on his face. Well, I kinda liked it without it...but the People have spoken!
So, when the girl was done, I climbed back up on the upper deck, brought up my clip light I brought from home, and managed to paint a chin on that lil' tyke. While I could hear San Francisco gearing up for a Saturday night around me while I was on the scaffolding, the last thing I did was sign the mural. It took me awhile to figure this one out, folks. Do I do it artsy like? Email address? Website? Quite often I think a signature often distracts from the main image. So, I kept it simple and put my John Hancock (or, since I'm Filipino, how about Juan Tamad?) on it 'coz I sure did have one helluva time painting it...and I'm damn proud of it, too!
It ain't over yet, folks! Tomorrow I get to use Precita Eyes Mural Arts' version of a varnish which they call Sheercoat and which will protect the mural for as long as that wall is up there. And then on Monday, I'm gonna sort out the top of the fence which is at the bottom of the wall, not in view of any of the shots on this blog 'coz, well, to be honest, it's not as fun as the rest of the other stuff, ya dig? ...and can you believe it, but the scaffolding is actually going away this coming week? Well, you folks will be the first ones to see the mural sans scaffolding on this here blog thing. Stay tuned!
Bonus tracks... In celebration of tonight's accomplishment, come join me in a celebratory dance:
Got down from the top deck of the scaffolding and started the bottom deck...if this was the Bay Bridge, I'd be swerving, trying to avoid falling cables - ta ta dum! Thanks, I'll be here all week, don't forget to tip your wait staff!
Hey, kids...here's a fun Step-by-Step chart of how I painted today's latest installments of the PFS Mural! Print one out and be the first kid to have one on your block...at your school, ashram, or yeshiva! Cool beans!Twas fun doing freehand squiggles and the large apostrophe shapes (the meaning of these things escapes me at the moment) It's a nice contrast from using stencils, and it was a pleasant release from doing straight lines like the hours spent on the Edwardian houses. Heard of the forecast of rain for tomorrow & for the rest of the week, so I cranked out as much of the design as possible to keep Mean Mr. Rain at bay.
The original design had three large red circles between grad girl's head & the front wheel of the bicycle. (The reason for these circles also ran hastily out the door with the last meanings for the aforementioned items - conspiracy, perhaps?) But in translating the Illustrator rendering to the wall painting, certain elements had to be edited out or re-arranged. And, thus, to all you die-hard fans of large, enigmatic red circles, I regret to inform you that the red circles unfortunately will not make an appearance this evening (or any other evening on this mural)
Got hip to the news by my dear friend Jeph Folkins last night (while he was driving home from working as part of the camera crew for the NBC TV show "Trauma" which is all shot in San Francisco & the Bay Area), that I am painting on the side of the building where he & a bunch of buddies had an apartment together back in the late 80's/early 90's! Tres coincidence, no? I totally remember hanging out and doing what young kids in their early 20's do with Jeph, Matt, Cris, and Wes in that same building...almost 20 years ago! Well, it's one of those things that if you live in San Francisco long enough, you can write about these things in a blog like this.
Not having an iPod or even a little transistor radio up on the scaffolding, I listen to the sound of the birds that fly past, the drone of traffic planes above, and the washing machine of the apartment whose back patio is in plain view from the scaffolding and conference room. However, now & then I get a song stuck in my head and today it was the song from the 1930's film "42nd Street" with the music numbers choreographed by one of my all time champs Busby Berkeley. It's worth every nickel of your time watching the whole sequence below...
Looks like not much movement from yesterday since it took me all afternoon to clean up the Edwardian house stencils and start on some bubbles on the left. One steady hand making straight lines and the other holding onto the lanyard of my harness I'm wearing to help keep balance. With my lanyard hand (very technical term!) I was able to also grasp a little plate (Filipinos call 'em 'platito') which I use to hold my paint color I'm using - how 'bout that skill, folks?
Oh, btw, ya can click on each image in this blog to see 'em all nice & big-like! Sorry, to insult your super-tech skills if you knew already this - go back to making your Super Computer, you tech-savy genius person you!
That Edwardian house stencil was kicking my butt today! After getting the birds in the upper left corner sorted out, it was just a flick of the wrist in positioning the red outlined Edwardians.No probs getting them in the right place, sponging them on was not so easy!
Oh, by the way, this is how stencils work: after cutting out an image on heavy card (spray shellaced 'em so that paint wouldn't soak thru and ruin 'em) and with a paint sponge (another one of my favorite tools - next to the overhead projector (OHP), remember?) you dab the stencil with thin applications of paint. Thick dabs will end up making the stencil really blotchy which goes against one of the reasons why you end up using stencils in the first place - clean, sharp lines. Stencil graffiti is more often done with spray paint, which, believe it or not, does not last long, compared to murals painted from good, sturdy mural paint from Precita Eyes Mural Arts.
So, now you know, why don't you try it? Okaaaaay?
Flat surfaces work best for stencils, but, just my luck, the wall I'm painting the mural on is composed of wood siding that has big gaps in between each plank. So, not so easy to tape stencils on really flat, but, take heart, dear friends, yours truly took up the challenge and managed to stencil the bubbles, trees, and even the mountains this way. But, in cutting out the Edwardians, I knew that all the small details in their designs would mean more time sponging...and that time came today. They all came out blotchy for some reason...but in fine-tuning the first house using thin brushes with the primer paint, it came out really sharp!
Alas, dear folks, by the time I finished, my arm was ready to fall off from spending all this time on the houses, and I had only enough strength left to take this shot ...and, yes, it was only 5:30pm sometime shortly after the Sun clocked out from her day shift.
Bonus tracks... Street stencil art is "in," people! In San Francisco alone you walk by about 3 or 4 of 'em on one block of downtown sidewalk alone. Hey, take a shot of some of your favorites with your cell phone and I'll post some good ones on this blog...whaddya say?
I personally really dig stencil art and not necessarily the graffiti type either (it's kind of a continuation of my love for making & cutting out shadow puppets) and the guy who made them a big hit that kids in Iowa are even trying to copy his style is that famous Bristol artist Banksy. Saw a bunch of his work while living in London and while I was working in Bristol too. Here's a short primer on the enigma that is Banksy from several years ago...
Yesterday was a complete wash out 'coz the rain wouldn't make up it's mind - it would rain for a little bit, then stop, then resume raining, then stop, then - ah, ya know what I mean! But, this happened all day and there wasn't a good set of hours of dry weather for me to climb up that darn scaffold... But when I saw the Big Ol' Sun muscling out that San Francisco fog this morning, I knew that today would be a good day for some paintin' Here's what a day of sunshine produced: Anila came with me today and chilled out with her book in the conference room in between giving me advice about mixing colors. If you didn't know already, Anila is a really good color expert, even though I might be a bit biased in saying so. She can see the sunset and see blue where an ordinary person can see only see orange and yellow. Here's her pic of me painting from behind...so that's how I looks like! Funny thing...while I was painting today I heard a dog barking nearby. It turned out the dog was barking at me from an apartment window several buildings away. Poor thing probably isn't used to seeing a strange guy up at his level. Took a pic on my cell phone, but the darn thing didn't come out any good. Ah, this technology thingy (rolling eyes up) - can't live with it / can't live without it!
Just like a parade organizer in San Francisco, I always check the daily weather forecasts. Saw there was a 20% chance of rain, but I climbed up the scaffolding & started working. While taping the water stencils on the mural wall, I kept looking up and witnessed the sky changing from puffy white cotton ball clouds to black, heavy clouds like the dark fluff from a vacuum cleaner bag (minus the hair - gross, dude!)
Whenever I check for rain, I always have this image (to the left) by Norman Rockwell pop up in my head. Even though I thought alot of his illustrations were kinda cheesy, his strong sense of silent storytelling left an indelible impression on me growing up.
Managed to take a shot of the impending dark clouds on my cell phone (without getting paint on it) We're right in the beginning of the rain season here in the Bay Area and I think I've been really lucky so far. But, hey, got tarp covering my gear on the scaffolding, so like a boyscout, I came prepared!
Just when I was finishing the last stencil, I felt some drops on my whiskers, and I knew it was my cue to exit Stage Left. Just in time 'coz when I was climbing down the ladder, the rain started to give me a good marinade.
Well, despite of things, I managed to add a couple more elements today:
So far as I write this, the clouds have yet to unburden a huge load. In fact, it really hasn't rained hard since I got off of the scaffold. But, boy, those clouds still look like they're crossing their legs tightly waiting to go pee!
Got on the scaffold early this morning and cleaned up the stencils that I did yesterday. Then the rest of the day spent on just painting the reading dad & kid alone!
Been getting some great feedback from people who work at the offices of PFS, quite often through an open window. Always good to hear that the folks there enjoy watching the mural develop right before their eyes. Well, the way I see it, this mural is their's at the end of the day and I hope it makes their day a little bit lighter when they see it through the window. Was really touched to see that Eric put a color print of the design on the ledge in front of the window looking out at the wall. As they say in London: Nice one, mate!
Bonus tracks... Mural arts are definitely still hip, daddy-o! Check out one of my favorite new muralist Blu with a video combining mural art & animation. His site is worth your visit! (Peep his animations if ya can) http://www.blublu.org/
Got to Kinko's as soon as they opened this morning to print out the Victorian house as a 15 X 24 inch print. I wasn't happy with the trace of the projection of the house that I did yesterday and I thought a print spray mounted on card would make a cleaner image. Picked up a spray can of clear shellac from good ol' Soko Hardware in J-town, grabbed all the finished stencils, and set up a spraying center at the bottom of the scaffolding. Card and paper are porous materials and shellac helps keep the stencils from getting soggy from multiple applications of paint. Here's my temporary installation that lasted less than 2 hours:
So, I sat down with my feet dangling off the edge, taped up the mountain stencil, and sponged on the paint. Seemed I was up on that scaffolding for hours and, yet all I got was the beginning of the top right of the design. By the time I was done, it was dark and it was only 6pm! Didn't have a light to shine on the wall, so I took a shot with a flash through the conference room window. It came out kinda dark, but you can get the gist:
Oh, btw, the paint for the mural is from Precita Eyes Mural Arts, a great non-profit arts organization dedicated to promoting mural making & teaching mural arts in the community:http://www.precitaeyes.org/ They sell their own acrylic paint specifically designed for murals. The folks down there were really helpful with all my questions about outdoor murals. If you're down on 24th St. in SF's Mission District picking up a double scoop of Secret Breakfast at Humphrey Slocombe, make it a point to swing on by their Visitor Center as well...it's well worth it!
Had set up our living room as a workshop to trace more images on cardboard, which eventually will be cut as stencils. Sure do appreciate living in a place with enough room to use an overhead projector for this project. Our last apartment in London was a one room studio that was big enough to unfold a folding table and that's about it! I first taped a sketch of the bubble-blowing girl that I did last night on the scaffold (with Capt. Anila commandeering the projector in the conference room) Then I moved the overhead projector back & forth and matched the girl from the projector to the sketch taped to our wall. This made the rest of the images on our living room to scale to the sketch of the girl that I did on the mural wall last night. Pretty clever, eh?
Crossing my fingers, hoping this all works!
Bonus tracks... While working, I played these and other LP's on Anila's turntable. Thanks for everyone's patience, but we're gonna have a dance party as soon as we snag a 2nd turntable & a mixer. Practice your dance routines in the meantime!
After printing the image in black & white on a sheet of transparency, I projected it on the wall with the help of one of my favorite tools in the world - an overhead projector! (Santa, give someone else an iPhone, I'd rather take an OHP - overhead projector!) Alex Torres & Allan Manalo of Bindlestiff Studio kindly loaned out the OHP for this project. Alex even dropped it off at the office...salamat, pare!
Anila & I started to set up in the conference room around 5 today when the light was just starting to fade (coincidence that it was Day Light Savings today or did I plan it out? Hmmm....) As soon as I got harnessed up & on top of the highest level, it was dark and the image was really sharp after adjusting the focus.
My plan was to start with the girl blowing bubbles. Like a corner stone or a registration mark, she is the base from which all images get adjusted. I traced her outline directly on the wall with a trusty 8B Staedlter graphite pencil. Wouldn't ya know it, not only was the scaffolding frame in the way, but the security ties were giving me grief as well! With some of that good, ol' improv grease (found where elbow grease is sold) I moved & shifted the image around the huge nails with Anila, safely inside the conference room, as the pilot of the projector (Ya won't catch this pilot checking her Facebook during this operation!)
Tracing out other elements like the shapes on the bottom left, the reading kid & dad, and the bear also helped give a definite shape to the image. Later I'll trace out the other elements like the fish, bubbles, trees, etc., cut them out as stencils, and then adjust them around the first traces which I'll use as guide posts.Well, at least that's the plan right now, folks!
Hanging on to dear life! I'm desperately hanging on to the lanyard of the harness loaned out by Rene. Helps keep my balance when I'm leaning towards the wall. Oh, btw, there's a huge gap & a big drop from the scaffolding to the wall...so, not a good idea to really lean against the wall when I'm tracing/painting.
Bonus tracks...
Anila gets full photo credit in this entry! Here's a sample of some of her shots while I was on the scaffolding...
Image above is the back wall of the conference room with the image reflecting off of the windows from the projector.
Not quite the most exciting blog entry title, (like "New Carpeting: Here it comes!" or "Understanding paper creases")...but it works for this thing! Well, folks, here's what today ended with...
You're scratching your head & quietly asking your screen, "What's so hard about that? Piece of cake, right?"
Well, not quite... Seeing the scaffolding up for the first time after the guys had set it up last week, I really got the sense of what I was really up against...or on top of - to choose the right metaphor. I've been on top of some really tall ladders hanging theater lights back in the day. Shoot, I've even been on that crazy metal grid in the theater at Zeum, next to the Metreon in downtown San Fran. (You're way above the stage, looking down, and you're crawling on this super industrial grid that looks like the Jolly Green Giant's vegetable strainer. Union tech guys over there swear it's super safe!) But, dear friends, seeing this...together with the reality that I had to climb on top of it gave me all the bad stuff that may come up in your head if you had to climb this...
Even the picture makes me dizzy!
Oh, by the way, for some reason the scaffolding company didn't install a ladder initially. "Just climb on the sides where the cross-bracing meets the frame!" said the guy with a big scar on the side of his face. A ladder was thankfully installed the following day. So, here I am climbing up the ladder for the first time with Anila ready to throw down her camera and catch me if I fall.
The sweat of anxiety is quite difficult to capture on a digital camera!
Managed to rig up a pulley and was able to bring all the paint & materials up...a task that helped distract me from the fear of being up that high. Anila was down below (yeah, well, she was kind enough to offer her help & I didn't have to twist her pigtails to do it!) and she would hook paint cans & such one at a time...
Afterwards, climbing down proved just as nerve-wracking.
It turns out, the next time I tried to go up, I got to the top of the ladder and then froze. Something invisible hit me...and it was hard, hard like a big hard-hitting thing.
Friends, I tell you, my heart was pumping ice water - fast!
I had to get back down and call it a day...in fact, I called it a day and then called Charlie & Eric to let them know that me and very tall scaffolds don't mix well. Even met with both of 'em to discuss alternative solutions.
Well, just you know it, I call my buddy Rene Acosta (cue Lone Ranger theme music) and he just shows up, climbs up that ladder in the time that it takes me to sneeze, and manages to single-handedly haul up two big wood boards I got to provide extra safety up there. Using an over-used metaphor, he was all Jedi Knight-like in saying, "The more you climb up there, the easier it gets." And then all Zen-like, "Just take your time, don't rush it." He even said, "Be formless, shapeless, like water. Be water, my friend." No, he really didn't say that...that was Bruce Lee! He's an expert scaffold climber so, he literary showed me the ropes...that is, a harness. He let me borrow his harness and that made all the difference in the world today! I was able to scrape, sand, and paint one coat of that goshdarn primer all because of Mr. Acosta's harness and his double-parked training in the ninja scaffolding arts.
Don't got a pic of me in his harness yet , but here's a lovely view I got to see on top of that scaffolding, aided by this new-found confidence.
Maraming salamat, Rene! First coat, eh? Well, how 'bout we say that was a first for me as well!
Bonus tracks...
In between painting, I went to lunch at Tommy's Joynt not far from PFS. All the San Fran folks know this notorious Palace of Fine Cholesterol (there's already a bunch of images on the Web about this place), but has anyone really tripped out on those funky, sign-less shops up the block from Tommy's on Geary? Never quite sure what's going on over there...is it a bookstore, a fine art store, a print shop? But they change their windows often (oh, yes, I always check) and today saw some beauties that I had to cellphone shoot:
The British are coming! The British are coming!
This is a diorama of a Plant Cell made of toothpicks, cotton, and paper. The thing is, it looks like it definitely wasn't made by a kid...or was it?
The fact that it's up in a shop window is just one of those things that make the price of admission to this life of ours so worth it!
Working closely with Charlie and Eric, I made several drafts of a design that would look good on a wall to last for several years. This is the latest draft which is open to evolve and change when transposing an Adobe Illustrator rendering to a large wall mural:
Here's a comp of what it would look like on the wall:
The scaffolding is all up (thankfully with a ladder) and it's full steam ahead!
A couple weeks prior, I painted a mural in my friend Eric's kid's room. Eric works as Senior Program Staff at PFS and he had shared a picture of the mural to his workmates. Charlie saw a picture of the mural & he wanted one too!
To the left is a photo of my last mural Charlie saw. With expectations of covering a nice, discreet wall inside the warm, pleasant interior of PFS' office, I followed Charlie and Eric into a conference room and was directed to look out the window. Pointing at a wall outside, on a building opposite the window, three stories up high, Charlie nonchalantly intoned, "That's where we'd like our mural."
At that exact moment, I discretely muffled the sound of my heart falling on the floor. Grateful that there was carpeting... The wall in all its unpainted glory to the right.
Now, it's at this point of the story, someone with a rather timid disposition would have turned on their timid heels in order to hide behind a nice comfy project like folding a thousand paper cranes or making a portrait of one's auntie in colored macaroni.
Alas, yours truly's heels stayed put and resolutely began the process of what is known as "The PFS Mural Project"
Dear reader, this blog begins with how this Project develops from here on...and in between and afterwards I'll pass on to you anything else worth noting in hand-made or digital artwork or graphics that I do. I may also call to your attention visuals or other items that are worthy of your time.
As always, feel free to correspond accordingly with the kindness afforded to a discriminating patron of good taste.
Wish all of you could have made it, but Charlie, Eric, Shorey, and everyone else at Pacific Foundation Services sure did pull off a great reception last night.
