Trompe L'oeil Chalk Painting: Little Italy Festa 2008

Here's two views of the finished chalk painting of Saint Domenic I did over the weekend for the "Gesso Italiano" part of the annual Little Italy Festa here in San Diego.





Hunter came down to chalk with me again on Sunday:

Chalk Painting photos from Little Italy Festa

Johm Hiemstra, Scenic Artist, originally uploaded by photoman1552.

Check out this gorgeous photo of me chalking yesterday-- I am eternally grateful to Robert of Rancho Santa Fe Photography for posting taking the time to get this shot of me laying down the picture frame pattern in chalk from an original pounce pattern.

Little Italy chalk 2008: Saturday pix

Here's the first pictures from Gesso Italiana 2008, the annual chalk street painting festival, happening this weekend in Little Italy, San Diego.


renderings in the studio


first things


developing background


face of Saint Domenic


working with my assistant, Hunter


end of day Saturday


Raul

Chalk Painting in Little Italy this weekend

I've been so busy I forgot to post here until now that, yes, I am doing chalk painting again this year in Little Italy as part of the annual Little Italy Festa here in San Diego.

Starting today (sorry for late notice)around ten am, the street painting starts and finishes tomorrow, Sunday, as part of the Festa, which draws over 100,000 people to the neighborhood.



Because we moved since last year's starry night painting (above), I can walk down to paint from my house, which well suits both my urban and green design aesthetics, especially when you consider that Little Italy has been both mine and Heather's favorite neighborhood in San Diego since we moved here in 1999.

Here's a pic of one of my favorite chalk pieces, Michelangelo from 2003:

If you are wondering what happened to my 2006 chalk installation piece, check back in a few weeks for long story and series of pix.

If you're looking for the next posts on Currant or Lucky D's, I'll be back at them next week, along with pix of this weekend.

Currant in San Diego Home and Garden

When I titled my last post "back to the restaurants" plural, I wasn't just talking about this summer's faux finishing work @ Lucky D's near the ballpark in San Diego's "East Village".

San Diego Home & Garden magazine just ran a feature in their September issue about San Diego's "growing sophistication" in restaurant & nightclub design and one of their stellar examples is Currant, the restaurant in downtown San Diego I worked on last summer-- here is my previous post about Currant from last September.

Here's the article cover and page featuring Currant from the actual magazine.





I will post clearer pictures of actual project in next post.

Back to the restaurants.....

September was a busy month for me and The Frame Maker, too, with much to report on many fronts.

Not only did I finally finish the trompe l'oeil children's circus mural that has dominated these posts all summer, my new friend Dave Egan finally opened the doors at his new bar Lucky D's, my other faux and trompe l'oeil painting project this summer here in San Diego.

I have a lot of good pictures of the progress of this job I will put up here, and I will start by expanding on my earlier posts on Lucky D's.

First here is an "in-between" shot of the faux painted brick corner.



You can also see some of the steps in the stencil work we used to create the painted wall paper effect, even clearer in the next two shots of the main part of the wall.





These pictures also reveal my secret weapon on this particular project, one of my new students, Coral, who worked on the stencil application of this painted finish. I met Coral and fellow painter Heather Diemand this spring-- Lucky D's was our first training project together.

Here's a shot of these two working on this finish with me this summer.



This last pic and the next one of yours truly were taken by very talented friend Mike Brown, who has documented a few of my projects for me now.



While Mike has also created magnificent digital images of my fine art painting for giclee printing purposes, his real work with the camera reaches far beyond that. Look for Mike's work in the San Diego edition of 944 and on his website at www.mikebrownportfolio.com.