New Faux Finish Classes (finally!) posted at the San Diego Finishing School.com

The show of my paintings at Joe Bedford's Coalesce came together really well for last Friday's opening reception.

Another thanks to everyone who came out to Little Italy, though I'm supposed to focus on the faux and mural painting on this blog and leave the rest to my new Wordpress blog www.johnhiemstra.com".

The real reason for this (on-topic)post is to make sure anyone reading this who is interested in my teaching about faux finishing and mural painting in San Diego know that I've FINALLY scheduled two sequential days of semi-private painting classes at the Banker's Hill studio I share with HGTV Design Star Jen Guerin at the end of the month.

These will be complete intensives in my entire set of strategies for utilizing water-based media to achieve an incredible array of faux and painted finish effects.

Learn to interpret other surfaces and finishes and design your own one-of-a-kind painted finishes with non-toxic, low to zero VOC materials in creative ways that help position your faux-finishing or custom painting business for success.

Old School Chargers and Padres Logos at Lucky D's

I started to write about this project last fall shortly after it was completed, with trompe l'oeil brick and wallpaper paint treatments on new drywall to complement exposed, sandblasted brick of original building.

Because Lucky D's closed for business just a few months later, I didn't go on, but today I had an inquiry about doing weathered signage on original brick, so I'm posting up a few pictures of the rest of this commercial/hospitality painting project.

Once Dave had decided to go with the local sports theme, we thought up doing the original San Diego team logos on the brick wall behind the pool table. In addition to being the original logos from the 60's (part of Dave's theme at the time), I painted them in an aged or weathered fashion to look as if Dave had uncovered them from 30 years ago in the remodel.


Chargers and Padres logos on brick wall at Lucky D's downtown

The trompe l'oeil/faux aspects of this paint treatment worked out pretty well in context of the overall "age" of the bar. I will put up some more contextual photos later, but here's a couple of detail shots for now.


painted San Diego Chargers logo


painted San Diego Padres logo

Venetian Plaster Ceiling

On the theme of finishing up old business (see last post), I came across pictures of some past projects I've been meaning to publish, but haven't yet for variety of reasons.

So here's a room I'm really pleased with for its light touch but authoritative impact.



The yellow panels behind the piano are a simple acrylic faux finish that corresponds with the walls in the main room that includes the piano room (where this picture is taken from), I have pictures of that room somewhere, too now that I think about it.

The plaster ceiling is designed to correspond to that color but offer the depth and richness of the piano finish with dramatic reflectance and glow of highly polished wax finish over burnished venetian plaster.

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.

New Faux Painting Work

Here's pix from another faux finish/ decorative painting job I'm working on right now for a restaurant in downtown San Diego.



The design is to reference a traditional almost Victorian style and feel, monogrammed of course with most significant initial (in this case, "D"). You can the pattern more clearly in this picture of the sample:



This finish is done in acrylic glazes and original stencils on fresh sheetrock walls in the restaurant office. We will utilize the same finish in the main bar area -- with a twist, of course. More photos coming as project develops.