Wednesday, April 25, 2007

First Update of Spring 2007

Its been a busy winter since my last e-mail update, with several new exciting developments both professional and personal. I have been fortunate to have had some fantastic contracting opportunities creating some unique faux finishes in a few gorgeous homes here in San Diego, with a couple of fun mural projects coming this summer. If you haven't been to my site in a while, check out the new streamlined www.john-scenic.com (launched a few weeks ago) featuring some of this new work as well as regular RSS updates from my blog handpaintedmuralsfauxfinishwalls.blogspot.com. I started the blog in order to write more easily about different aspects of what I'm doing with custom handpainted murals, faux finishes, and my fine and applied art projects as well post pictures of different projects and processes that don't fit anywhere on my site. Its also allowed me to answer questions I've received via e-mail at greater length and in more detail and share both questions and responses with a larger audience. Today I want to invite everyone to this weekend's ArtWalk event in Little Italy, where I will have a booth (#786) for the third year. This year I'll be showing all new fine art paintings I've been developing with my agent, Tom Pergola. Signing with Tom is one of the past winter's events I am really excited about, especially since Tom recently secured my first art publishing contract for the new paintings. I will write about the details later, but here is the most recent version of the first painting in the series that started it all: I will be showing this painting and two others from this series this weekend at ArtWalk, as well as some smaller skyscapes, one really large painting, and the beginnings of a new series of mixed media paintings that have evolved out of some of the more elaborate faux finish projects I have been doing. There is a lot more news on the professional side that will have to wait until later posts (I have to get down to the studio now....), but I do want to share one more important event in our creative development here, which is the confirmed arrrival of our second child, a little girl, due this September 21st (yes, the day after Hunter's birthday). This is the first official announcement now that Heather has cleared the first trimester with flying colors. I have also started a MySpace page, muralssandiego, to write and post pictures of more personal stuff for friends and family (like pics from our recent vacation in Kauai, coming soon). Check it out if you have a chance, and check the blog for further updates about my fine art, prints when they become available, custom mural and faux finish work.

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

San Diego Finishing School Update

Today I'm getting ready to start a new series of jobs onsite after some time devoted just to Heather and Hunter and our house. One of the things I love about my business model is that every week is different (unless the job is very large).

Frequent change is good for me on many levels. Today I was able to appreciate a wider perspective on things (one I have to put on hold when doing specific tasks), which let me know that in the face of growing demand for my services, I've spread myself a little thin.

So I've decided, despite a very successful first six months that saw 6 new students study at the School and built two new partnerships with local painting contractors, in fact, due to overwhelming demand for my services, that I will not be accepting any more students until this fall.

There are a few reasons for this.

One is business growth: when I began booking contract mural and faux finish job two months (and more) in advance, it occurred to me that splitting the studio into two functions (both teaching and contracting) might be tough. After doing a couple of refinishing projects in the studio as well, I decided it was almost impossible.

Along the same lines, I have had some exciting developments with my fine art recently, which I hope to announce "officially" by this month's ArtWalk event in San Diego's Little Italy, Booth #786.

The other big thing that happened is that I learned a lot: about what people are really looking for in a learning experience, about what people need to succeed in the business of faux finishing and mural painting, and how I can improve the design of my offerings at the San Diego Finishing School to be able to help people even more effectively

So of course I want to make all these improvments now, and if you've been checking in on the Finishing School web site recently, you'll have noticed I got started on the upgrade and then stalled; there is just too much going on right now. The new ideas for class organization and collaboration services for contractors will have to wait to develop until the summer, as will the planned scheduled workshops in trompe l'oeil drawing and mural painting at the heart of a third local business partnership I look forward to announcing soon as well.

I posted a condensed version of these thoughts on the site today and want to repeat here the most important part of the message: THANK YOU to everyone who made the first six months of the San Diego Finishing School such a success and such an exciting time. (and please stay in touch through this blog for most current updates!)

Sunday, April 08, 2007

More Trompe L'oeil

While flipping through travel pictures this past week in research for more new fine art paintings (which I hope to be ready for ArtWalk at the end of April), I came across a couple of classic examples pertinent to my last entry about the differences between "faux" and "trompe l'oeil" and how they can me mixed.

trompe l'oeil window mural

Note the detailed marble treatment of the painted column ("faux") to match the real marble column on the right. Then notice how the painted light and shadows convince you of the three dimensionality of the column ("trompe l'oeil").