Above: Illustration by Angie Wang

I was trying to figure out how to push some areas in the design as we were beginning to paint. I thought it would be a good opportunity to investigate something that Ive always loved- fashion.  I felt so many characters in this image were REALLY wanting to wear something awesome.

Ive always loved interesting and unexpected outfit choices- on me and anyone else I see working their style.  ESPECIALLY those braves souls in Cincinnati who are working the Tokyo look (aka anything goes, no matter what). And, especailly if their Tokyo in Cincinnati look involves patterns, bows or weaves.

Real Tokyo style above.

I was doing research in fashion design and illustration when I came across illustrator Angie Wang. Hands down my current favorite illustrator. She is incredible.

Angie Wang has a fashion illustration blog that she updates frequently- the follwing images are from that.  Here’s her Blog

After completely falling in love with the unexpected outfits, bold color palettes and illustration style of Angie Wang I worked on a couple of sketches for my own mural characters:

Today we are on-site working on the mural- starting the final layers on these re-fashionized characters! Come check it out!

We used an opaque projector connected to my computer to transfer the design in sections.

Stephen Cavanaugh has been my assistant through the entire mural design and painting process. He is a great artist who worked with me during ArtWorks’ Seedbomb project this past fall. Here we are on day one of the transfer. Photo by Scott Beseler.

The photos below are by Mark Grote. Mark has been photo documenting the mural process for us since the first days on location. I also met Mark through the ArtWorks Program. He is a second year Industrial Design major at DAAP as well as a great artist. Check out some of Mark’s work here.

A typical busy Saturday at the store.

Paint cart and a cappuccino.

One of my favorite parts of this project- talking to the kids who come through.

After the first few layers of paint went up, we re-projected some additions to the design.

Heres Stephen working on the second transfer.

And we painted on!

Let me take you back to how this all started.

P+V is a green general store located on Main Street in Over-the-Rhine. I’ve known the owner Dan Korman since I started working at ArtWorks in 2007.

The store was scheduled to move from Vine to Main Street in October 2010. Dan contacted me early last fall and we started talking about a mural for the store’s new digs after the move. We met on-site one afternoon to size up the wall facing the entrance on the left side of the store. This 10 x 13′ wall would be the location of my mural.

Thinking about it now, I would have never EVER expected to be painting a mural in the very spot where I tried (TRIED!) to drink coffee and look so cool every morning before going to school at the School for Creative and Performing Arts.This is how I remember Kaldis before it was Park+Vine.

But, back to this wall. Here it is shortly after the move in October:

Dan watched the progress of Ice Cream Daydream as it was being painted this past summer on 12th and Jackson. This was my first mural and project management experience with ArtWorks. This gig at ArtWorks helped me land the job with Park + Vine. So, a big thank you to ArtWorks for doing what they do best – forming and training artists for success in their field. To support this amazing program click here.

Dan was attracted to the style and spirit of Ice Cream Daydream and wanted something similar for Park+Vine.  We brainstormed content revolving around community, sustainability, and the positive momentum of Main Street and Over-the-Rhine.

Here is how the design process happened.

First, I started with some visual research.  I love creating hybrid animal/object/ human-type creatures. I find they have the ability to represent human potential and passion. Ice Cream features some of these guys- cupcake plants, pie flowers and so on. I showed Dan the images below to get a feeling of what he liked:

Also, since we wanted to convey Cincinnati’s growth as a community, I pulled together imagery that was indicative of location, community, and a sense of place.

And, of course patterns! All kinds that i love- retro, organic, psychedelic, etc.

I digitally collaged some of this research imagery to use as a jumping off point for my design process. For me, designing involves multiple rounds of digital collage, drawing, tracing, scanning, photoshopping, coloring and doing all of that again and again till I am satisfied.

Below: the first conceptual digital collage

And the best part – I got to make myself a fun little logo in the process!

Here it is:

Fun! And here again, for profesh purposes:

Outside America

January 21 – February 24, 2011

Curated by Ruby Thorkelson in collaboration with Jan Brown Checco and Indira Freitas Johnson.

Exhibiting Artists: Amanda Checco, Jan Brown Checco, Sun Choi, Barbara Houghton, Terri Kern, Indira Freitas Johnson, Eleftheria Lialios, Fang Ling-An, Lisa Siders (in collaboration with Denise Burge, Tracy Featherstone, and Jen Ustik).

In this age of economic and cultural globalization, American-centric ideologies reach far and wide in various manifestations, both cultural and political. Still, the violence, romance, and overall exportation of all things Americana will never be ubiquitous. Both resistant and non-subversive existence will always persist across the globe.

“Outside America”, seeks to explore the infinite aspirations, identities, and political and cultural expressions that exist outside of or in opposition to constructions and realities of American identity, politics, and culture. Woman Made Gallery will be showing works in all media by nine women artists, both U.S.-born and originally from other countries, addressing issues “Outside America”.

Postcard from the Taj

Hip Hop Neti Pot

Holy Hemispheres

Digital Illustration:

Mural Design

The Night Garden / Design proposal for Eden Floral Boutique mural

Hello Gorgeous  / Design proposal for Eden Floral Boutique Mural

Ice Cream Daydream / Final design draft for Eden Floral Boutique Mural

Prints:

East meets West (Stone Lithography)

Mechanicat (Etching)

Printball series 1 / Kittenpants: To Dream the Impossible Dream (Paper Lithography)

Printball Series 2 (Paper Lithography)

Prima donna Piranha (Linocut)

Digital Photography:

Part 1, Wedding series triptych

More to this section when I finish my work for the show coming up next month in Chicago!

You have a few different options when it comes to mural-transfers:

First, there’s the pouncing method. This is the technique Michelangelo used to transfer his full-scale drawings onto the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

First the artist makes a line drawing of their full-scale image on paper. Holes are punched through the paper at  frequent intervals along the drawing. This punched paper outline is then taped to the wall and a charcoal or chalk powder is “pounced” over the holes, forcing the powder through the holes onto the wall. When you remove the paper from the wall you should be left with a series of small dots following the lines of the original drawing which can then be used as guidelines for the painting.

Here are some examples. Quilters seem to use the pouncing method a lot- these examples are from the quilting world:

You can also project your image onto the wall. Old school projectors and transparencies are a good way to go (my fav, even if they do remind me of high school math class):

and even better, digital projectors that work with your computer:

This is a great way to go for smaller scale indoor walls like the one below, but can be problematic for large walls outside (getting far enough away from the wall, having light conditions be dark enough, perspective issues, scaffolding getting in the way of the projection, etc).

Finally, there’s the gridding process. It is an inexpensive, low-tech, time-intensive process, and while it is not as quick as using a projector, it does have the added benefit of helping to improve your drawing and observational skills. A plus for the Apprentices!

In a nutshell, the grid method involves drawing a grid over your reference image, and then drawing a grid of equal ratio on your primed mural surface. Then you draw the image on your  wall, focusing on one square at a time, until the entire image has been transferred.

Here is my team gridding the wall: we marked one-foot increments across the top, bottom and both sides of the wall, then used a snap-line to “draw” the lines across the wall. Annie is at the top holding the chalk line, and each team member below her is handing the line down to the very bottom, where Sydney was holding it in place where it is marked. When the line was in place and pulled tight, each person snapped it at their level of scaffolding.

ohhhh SaNAP!

It was easy to translate my image into a line drawing on the computer.

From there, I took the line drawing into Illustrator and created a grid in the same ratio as the one we had created on the wall. Five-foot sections were printed out on 8.5 x 11 paper.

Apprentices took on one five foot section at a time. Up they went on the scaffolding, using their amazing observation skills to make this 900 square foot image come to life.

Below: Chad and Erika

One square foot at a time! Emily, Sydney and Ke’Monte

Here, again is the rough draft:

The next day to give my team a well-deserved break from hard work outdoors, we spent the day in the studio drawing.

This particular image was perfect for our group. As teenagers, my Apprentices were inundated with new pop-cuture design and imagery on a daily basis, through television, shopping experiences at the mall, video games, the internet, and so on. I wanted to use that knowledge to our advantage.

My challenge for them that day was coming up with new design elements that would make our mural POP. The crazier the better. We started brainstorming- playing word association games and writing endless lists of ideas.  Then we got to sketching…

Chad wanted the sun in the upper left hand corner to be a giant sparking diamond:

Emily elaborated on the dessert flowers theme:

Ke’Monte had a couple of characters he wanted to add to this fantasy world:

and Erika thought the central tree figure should become more realistic:

I took these drawings home with me, scanned them into my computer and started to work them into the original design:

Printed the image out, drew on top of it:

Re-scanned, tweaked, added color:

Re-tweaked:

And finally, got someplace I was satisfied:

My team, my clients and my employers all signed off on this draft. THIS is what was going up on the wall!

Then, even though I had a final draft that was ready to go, I painted the whole thing too. I do most of my designing on a computer, and I knew the process of painting this image was going to be different than changing a color with a key command on a computer. Painting it first on a small-scale gave me the opportunity to see what my process might be  like on the big wall.

So how to you get from this to mural size? Read on, my friend!

It all started about a year ago – one winter night at the Skatin’ Place roller rink in Cincinnati.  Either Allison or I had just gotten over a cold and were touting the amazing benefits of the neti pot. Taking a break from busting out our amazing skating skillz (well, Allison’s skills) we watched skaters roll past, looking so cool in the dark rink under the neon blinking disco lights.  We both agree, skating is one of the coolest things around. You look cool, you feel cool, you can be GOD.

Why then, were neti-pots not so high up on the cool-factor list? They should be, they make you feel incredible! Why did fresh Nike Dunks trump the neti pot? Shouldn’t it be our goal to tell the kids whats really cool? Wellness! Herbal teas! Ancient nasal irrigation methods! Herbology and Aromatherapy! If these  things were all blinged up, with a sweet rap and a bumpin baseline to go with, wouldnt kids WANT to experiment with oil blends and herbal teas?

Earlier that fall we had submitted the piece below in ArtWorks annual “Secret ArtWorks” event.  Thousands of artists from all over the world submit 5X7 images which are sold for $75 each at the annual Secret ArtWorks party/fundraiser. The “secret” is the identity of the artist, which is revealed when the work is sold.

The image we submitted was part of a series, all about the legalization of gay marriage. This was the first photo shoot we did together. We were the designers, directors, makeup artists, set builders, lighting designers, photographers and models for the shoot.  We did everything. It was insane. Totally insane. But the outcome was successful.

About a month ago we got a letter in the mail from ArtWorks inviting us to be part of the EXPOSED 2010 exhibit. The Secret above had been selected as one of the Top 100 works of art at the Secret ArtWorks 2009 event. EXPOSED was the show at ArtWorks that would reveal the identities of the Top 100 Secret Artists.

We had to come up with a new idea, and create an entire photoshoot for EXPOSED. In a month. It took us 4 months to do our wedding shoot. We knew we had to move fast. So we decided to bring Hip-Hop Neti-Pot to life.

It is one of the biggest challenges (and joys), for an artist to take something floating around in the imagination and bring it to life in the physical realm. We can brainstorm all we want – but making the magic come to life- and doing it well- THATS making good art. For us, it is a very spiritual thing too.

Here is our beginning sketch:

In the sketch above, what you have is a DJ in a club-like setting with six arms (a reference to Hindu deities). Half of her arms are doing “hip-hop” things, the other half, doing “asian wellness” things and the third set of hands meditating in the center.  Behind her is a shelf of jars containing herbs, roots and other forms of ancient Chinese medicine.

After doing some research we learned that the neti-pot originated in India and has been practiced for centuries as one of the disciplines of yoga and Ayurvedic medicine.  Originally the wellness element of this shoot was Chinese medicine, but to convey our title “Hip-hop Neti Pot”, we also had to include Eastern Indian cultural references in the piece. So now we had a Hip-hop/Ayurvedic/Chinese-medicine shoot on our hands.

We decided to get the ball rolling by looking for costumes in the “Hip-hop/Ayurvedic/Chinese medicine” vein.

Talk of the Town costume shop on Reading Road is packed wall to wall with enough costume items and accessories to make your head spin. We took a few brainstorming shots, but soon realized that the costume we were looking for probably did not exist, yet. We were going to have to fabricate it ourselves. The trip was not a complete bust, though. Shots like this are always good for brainstorming.

Luckily, the following week, Allison found a sweet enormous purple hoodie with asian print at Plato’s Closet. I was going to make this baby into one fine-looking hip-hop Kimono. Kimonos are Japanese though. So now we have a HipHop / Ancient Chinese/ Eastern Indian / Japanese shoot here…

Here are some early hair experiments. Synthetic baby!

We found this shelf at the antique mall on Dixie Highway

and knew it was the one for our shoot:

We brought it home, along with a couple of sweet vintage lamps, and stood our mannequin in front of it for our first test-shots.

We were starting to get the look we were going for. Back-lighting the shelf was going to be another first for us. We wanted to our jars on the shelf to glow! Allison came up with a sweet design that we would drill, then set christmas lights into.

We enlarged the original design, and Allison drilled hundreds of little holes for hours.

Installing the lights

While Allison was drilling I was working on the jewelry. We wanted the jewelry and hair accessories to make some chakra references, in addition to being blingy bling BLING!

This week we have a lot to do. We shoot on Saturday, and only hope the creative Gods (2Pac, Guanyin, Ganesha, Buddha and Biggie) will be smiling on us. It’s hard to know how it will all look until you shoot, and hopefully all of these items will gel together and we will get the end result we were looking for. Fingers Crossed (all 60 of them)

(This is the 2009 crew, not 2010, but you get the idea)

I met the team at our mural site one week later – for the real start of our project.  Our group was small – 7 total, including myself, Annie (my Junior Teacher) Erika (18), Ke’Monte (17), Sydney (14), Chad (15) and Emily (17).  Here we are, as often seen in our studio.

I showed them the wall, we toured the studio, played some getting to know you games, and when all of that took only 15 minutes, we decided to go ahead and just start the mural. I took a picture of the team getting their safety gear on for the first time. It was an exciting moment for all!

(Sunscreen, yall!)

Prepping a mural surface starts with some heavy-duty wall cleaning.  That day we started with the first step of any mural – giving the wall a dry scrub with some wire brushes and all the vim and vigor we had. This is to knock off any loose paint and grit that might be hanging around on the surface.

On day two of our project  we were ready start the next phase of wall cleaning – “TSPing” – aka scrubbing the wall with chemicals. TSP (Tri Sodium Phosphate) is pretty harsh on the skin and can cause nasty chemical burns, so we used all the safety precautions we could think of; goggles dustmasks, gloves, long sleeves and pants and so on. Below is a pretty accurate portrayal of how we all looked that day. After the solution is mixed and scrubbed onto the wall, it is power-washed off.

Now you have yourself a clean surface, ready for priming. My team was excited to start painting on day 3. We got out our rollers, poured our enormous 5-gallon buckets of Nova Color primer into trays and got to work.

(Top: Erika  Bottom: Ke’Monte and Chad)

I gotta tell you, as mural surfaces go- you can’t get much better than ours.  Smooth like buttah. You might notice the panels on the wall.  A lot of people are curious to know if we put those panels up just for our mural. Luckily, the wall had been like that for years. Once upon a time, a building used to occupy the space where the parking lot now is on 12th and Jackson.  This building was demolished and interior brick was exposed on the backside of the Germainia building. Interior brick, unlike exterior brick, doesn’t hold up well againt the elements. These concrete panels were placed on the bottom portion of the building to protect those bricks. Lucky for us it happens to be a gorgeous surface for a mural.

It is unusual and pretty rare to have a surface like this to paint a mural on. I think all of my fellow Project Managers this summer were painting on brick walls- and this is the norm.  When you paint on bricks, you have to take special care to fill in each and every nook and cranny (like english muffins) of the mortar between each brick. This is a painstaking process. There is a term in the mural-painting world when your paint misses the deeper surfaces of brick walls -”holidays”. I am still not sure if this term is used as a noun or verb. Or if it is spelled that way. Either way, it kind of sounds like the opposite of what it is.

(This is not our wall. Whoever painted this had no holidays… or took no holidays? not sure)

Here is our wall, with 2 fresh coats of primer. Bling!

It was this same week, as we were cleaning and priming the wall, that I was coming home every night to wrap up my rough draft ideas for our clients. On the day that my team was TSPing their hearts out, I presented the Kellys their three options. There was one they decided on almost immediately, which spoke to them (and even made them giggle a little) more than the others.

And the winner was…

The “Rainbow-Ice-Cream- Heart-shaped-sunglasses” one! Later to be called Ice Cream Daydream. I was ecstatic.  When my team came in for lunch, I showed them what we were about to create. They were more excited than I was.

And this is when it really got interesting…