John Hiemstra, custom art and artist marketing

Color renderings and the best paint in the world arrives in my Pittsburgh studio

John — Wed, 26 May 2010 04:20:48 +0000

So I’m finally getting to next post in series of the mural I’m painting in right now in new Pittsburgh studio– if you missed my first post on this mural project, I’m painting it on canvas and (ironically enough) shipping it back to San Diego for installation. Here’s what it will look like:

Well, sort of; we made a modification after best solution became doing it here rather than waiting for me to return to San Diego and paint directly on her walls. The vertical line in the rendering indicates a corner where we were going to wrap the mural two feet onto return wall for complete sight lines, the canvas will only cover the main wall, an area approximately six feet by six feet.

Confused? Then this second rendering should help clarify that the mural will actually be seen through a window; the retuen wall was to complete every possible sightline:

So even though its not really trompe l’oeil painting, its a trompe l’oeil effect of creating the client’s desired landscape view in her workout room that currently looks out onto stucco wall in a light well. Anyone who knows me and my work can see why this is the kind of project I love: rather than a mural pasted onto a room that may or may not deserve one, I like murals that seamlessly disappear as murals by completing a room or experience without pronouncing “I am mural, hear me roar.” Its always more fun when people figure it out a second later.

Exterior trompe l’oeil games are especially gratifying to me and so after six months of exclusively web designing and business building since I moved to Pittsburgh, I’m pretty happy to have a well thought out mural gig, even if it is relatively simple. Once I process some more pix, I’ll get caught up here with what’s really going on in the studio, I’m just about exactly a week behind in my reporting and the actual doing. I expect to finish up this weekend and plan to do some live realtime progress shots of the detail work.

If you’re wondering what kind of website/business stuff I’m doing here, there’s actually a lot to tell, but here’s a link to a site I just completed for a commercial photographer here with pretty spectacular work and a super clean aesthetic, which makes for a nice site if I do say do myself; check it out at edromboutphotography.com.

The other fun part I wanted to mention from last week’s beginning was the arrival of fresh paint from my favorite company, Nova Color in Los Angeles. It truly is the best paint in the world, and its esoteric painter excitement to have a batch of their fresh color to play with; yes I took a picture because its also my plesaure to sing their praises (full disclosure: they don’t pay me a cent for anything I say about them, they’re just the best!)

Mural painting in Pittsburgh

John — Sat, 22 May 2010 03:48:11 +0000

This project IS mine, but continues on the theme, because even though I’m painting it in my studio here in Pittsburgh its destination is back in San Diego and southern California.

This client and I met several years ago at one of the public art events I used to do in Little Italy San Diego, either the autumn chalk painting festival that goes with the annual Columbus Day weekend Festa or the annual spring ArtWalk– I don’t remember which, but what I like about this story is that she had kept my card for five plus years when she finally got in touch to have me paint for her.

She gave it to me last fall in San Diego when I went to look at her project, it had my old Sprint cel number I had forgotten about and my original web address, http://john-scenic.com. I still keep a page there, and sure enough she was able to find me. Score more points for online business presence.

So here’s what we’re doing, a fun bit of exterior trompe l’oeil to bring a “view” to a ground floor exercise room whose windows open to a light well.

Designed to view from the treadmill (above), this mural was originally going to be painted on the stucco wall outside the window on a return trip to San Diego. Because I’ve gotten so busy here in Pittsburgh not painting, that trip isn’t happening soon, so we’ve agreed that I will paint the image on canvas in the studio here and ship. My friend and colleague Eric Gilliat of Level One Art Installation will stretch and install on site.

Here’s a close-up of the black-and-white through-the-window mural design sketch.

and the head-on elevation sketch in 1.5″ scale.

Its a mountain landscape, with meadow and horses in the foreground, composed by specific request in an email dialogue illustrated with Google image searches. I use the black and white “cartoon” drawing like this for planning and layout purposes, and they receive approval from clients/designers before I move forward with color or samples.

So I’m painting this right now, taking pictures as I go to share with you here, but wanted to start from the beginning on this one. Watch for color renderings and more Pittsburgh-San Diego paint business irony this weekend.

southern California mural work

John — Tue, 18 May 2010 17:48:39 +0000

No, its not mine–

please check out the lovely mural work of new friend Mark Kolodziejczyk, with more online at http://specialchildrensart.org , the non-profit getting it done.

Their mission:

“To provide children with special needs the opportunity to express themselves through art, to promote self-esteem, and integrate them into society by creating a foundation for inclusion, while facilitating diverse experiences in the creative arts and positive social change within the community.”

Posted via email from johnhiemstra’s posterous

Chalk painting with Hunter

John — Tue, 18 May 2010 05:28:56 +0000

Just rediscovered this picture I love from 2008 of us in Little Italy San Diego and had to post.

Posted via email from johnhiemstra’s posterous

Graphic design gallery

John — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 08:33:06 +0000

Because someone asked, I’ve collected a few of the graphic design files for different business identities I’ve helped develop in the past, including my own. I’m not a trained graphic designer, but it comes up enough working on websites and marketing campaigns, since I believe all visuals should be unified– most of these translate into banners, themes & stylesheets for the corresponding websites.

Finally painting in Pittsburgh, even with the snow.

John — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 16:09:15 +0000

Its been crazy busy as the snow continues to fall here in Pittsburgh.

Since we’re moving this month into our new house, we have
two houses to shovel and the typical delays accompanying a total of
some 30″ of snow in the last two weeks:

work that needs done,
stuff to be hauled away, stuff to be moved in, all waiting,
with the rest of this somewhat unprepared
small city, for a the roads to get better, the snow to stop falling,
a break in the action somehow so I can get on with what
I have to do.

Now the bright side is that what I have been able to do
waiting for the world to dig itself out is paint–
well, prep for painting and paint, taking a poor condition
second floor and making it sealed, clean and safe for us to sleep in.

People who’ve worked with me know I actually do get excited about an excellent
prep job, and I’m proud to say that given time alotted (actually scraped somewhat painfully from the childcare schedule),
and poor conditions we started with, the repaired and fresh walls and ceiling have really came out great.

so I’ll be posting some iPhone pix of progress sequence here next, but I want to
give a shout out to one of my favorite products here that just got written up in the
almighty New York Times.

I’ve already been using the brilliant, zero-VOC Transitional Primer from AFM Safecoat on
what I call “welding” all the different surfaces together into a decent “canvas” on which to paint, in this case:

previously painted drywall

previously painted plaster

previously painted pine/waterbased

previously painted pine/leadbased/

raw poplar

raw pine

lots of acrylic caulking

fresh drywall

fresh mud

waterbased catalyzed resin

AFM Safecoat paints are completely green, non-toxic products, and as the article points out, even smell good out of the can. They do a whole line of interior paints, and also a line of all-natural wood finishes that I’ve used extensively on custom hardwood picture frames the past few years in San Diego.

Highly recommended from personal experience and will be generally available in Pittsburgh soon.

New Year, new mural, and art faux portfolios taking shape

John — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 16:45:42 +0000

Happy first post of the new year!

In addition to shoveling snow at two houses here in Pittsburgh, I’ve been working on web sites since the holidays, many different web sites. Some of them are even mine!

As I mentioned last fall, I’ve finally gotten all of my digital pictures on one drive, design/build/finishing portfolio pictures going back to San Francisco 1996 (these were actually print pictures I digitized in a big batch 5 or 6 years ago). Sorting through old pictures on the computer is interesting because they only show age through technical specifications, not fading, dust or deterioration of the paper.

Anyway its allowed me to find original full resolution files and complete folders of pictures on jobs long buried away on a CD, and show lots of detail in the galleries that was unavailable on any of my earlier portfolio websites. There are hundreds of pictures useful for both technical instruction and design idea generation when it comes to faux painting and other decorative painting treatments, so I’ve really just gotten started with 50 or so pictures about a handful of jobs posted so far.

The most developed example so far is a kids playroom designed with a circus theme I painted in an historic San Diego home in 2008. This project incorporated both faux finish and trompe l’oeil mural techniques, and so I listed different pictures with commentary in those two different galleries.

I also put some design work samples from this project on the custom art gallery page. These pictures help illustrate how a project like this comes to be something out of nothing before anyone tears into your house with buckets and brushes.

Happy Holidays!

John — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 06:47:17 +0000

Love AutoFocus Wordpress Theme for my online portfolio

John — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 22:44:10 +0000

I’m not usually so thrilled over the all the great free Wordpress themes out there.

They almost all require hacking up to do what I want them to do and to match options and capabilities with clients’ specifc needs and requests.

So given that I’m my own most critical client, I’m writing again today about this theme and the nice results it gives for my three portfolios I’m in the process of reassembling on this site. I’ve now posted seven entries/pictures on each of the three– a mural gallery, a selection of faux painting and custom textured, embedded and polished plaster finishes, and a portfolio of custom art projects, which includes scenic painting, chalk painting, public art and custom/commissioned paintings.

Here’s a screenshot of the navigation page for the custom art gallery, only the actual page is twice as big- I did hardly any customizing to make this blog perfect for me. It has a big beautiful pictures-first look on the single post/picture pages that I love, too.

Custom art portfolio screenshot