Category Archives: Garden/Furniture

Design, Garden/Furniture

More Murals, part 2 of 2

Side Door Mural unveiled

 

We decided to go with alternate B, the fish swimming in the same direction whether the door is open or closed. We reversed the direction shown in the previous article, so the big red fish is swimming toward our house.

Alternate B created an unexpected problem – what do you do at the edges, where the fish on one side meets the corral on the other side? I decided to bring both patterns around the corner and let them meet on the edges (third from top). It creates a wonderful texture as the different patterns battle it out.

An unexpected bonus is the color the mural adds to our garage, when the door is closed (sixth from top).

The side door faces our backyard, and the new murals add even more color to our wonderful garden.

Top                            door closed
Second from top        door open
Third from top            patterns meeting at edge
Fourth and fifth          details
Sixth from top            color in the garage
Seventh from top        down the stairs from our two story deck
Bottom picture            finished and signed by the biggest fish of all
Continue reading More Murals, part 2 of 2 →
Cartoons, Design, Garden/Furniture

The Scrap Family or Happy Anniversary

More Uses for Scraps

I can’t throw anything away. After our recent construction projects, I had boxes of oddly shaped wood scraps taking up space and getting in the way. Inspired by the little wood figures of Joaquín Torres-García, Lisa had suggested that I could make little people sculptures from the scraps. With our 29th anniversary coming up, I decided that now was the time.

I started with a figure in a suit, hat and tie – sort of a 1950’s company man. I then made a gardener, in tribute to Lisa. At the last minute, I added a cat.

In the first paint phase, the figures are black & white, with just a few touches of color. After looking at them a while, we decided to add some color, using some of the left-over paint from our garage door murals. Since Lisa is a Certified Master Gardener, the colorful gardener has MG on its sleeve. She is holding a plant, which some people insist looks more like a margarita.

I like them both ways, plain and colored. Which do you prefer?

I also made an anniversary card. I was trying to capture the feeling of those small moments when we say big things.

But wait, that’s not all! We got some terra cotta clay for our arts & crafts activity on the 4th of July – and made pots and cat faces. Lisa planted them up beautifully, as always.

 

 

 

Design, Garden/Furniture

More Murals, part 1 of 2

The fish swim around the corner

It was only a matter of time before I tackled the side door to our garage, once the front garage door mural was done. After all, our plan is to paint the entire garage to appear “underwater” – eventually.

The side door is around the corner from the front, beneath our two story deck. The paneled side door was in pretty bad shape, so I replaced and primed it for a mural. The side door has vertical proportions and is much smaller than the big horizontal front door. After considering many options, we decided that the side door would be a continuation of the front door theme, using the same elements and colors.

I thought it would be fun to introduce a really big fish, much bigger than any on the front. Small door, big fish – makes sense to me. Because the side door is narrow, a big fish could only peek in from the side. I decided to enlarge one of the red fish we’d used on the front door (love that color) and strengthen the red.

The side door is open most of the day, so we decided to paint the mural on both sides. This presented a problem – should we paint the door as if it was two sides of an aquarium (showing the same fish from front and back), with the fish swimming from the door knob on both sides (alternate A)? Or should we paint it so the fish was always swimming in the same direction (rear is mirror image from front), whether the door was open or closed (alternate B)? This is hard to explain, but the collages below show the two alternates.

Stay tuned for the next article to see what we picked

Top                             mural design
Second from top         mural “rippled” for underwater effect
Third from top             rippled mural with door recessed panels, knobs and layout grid
Fourth from top           “transparent” door – big fish at the door knob side-alternate A
Bottom                        big fish swimming toward stair open and closed-alternate B