First coat of primer on...hooray!

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!

Mural design drafts

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!

Stay tuned, sports fans...

The PFS Mural Project

Yours truly was commissioned by Charlie Casey of Pacific Foundation Services to paint a mural at their office in San Francisco.

Check out their site, they do really great things for the Bay Area community and beyond: http://www.pfs-llc.net/index.html

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.

Enjoy the show...