I went back to Casitas de Esperanza on Friday, not to work on the map mural but for their Easter event. It was open to all Amigos de Guadalupe residents They provided food for all guests and an Easter egg hunt & toy donations for the kids. Right before they released the kids to go hunt for Easter eggs the staff used my map to help line them up based on age. It made me so happy to see the map being used and to see all the kids running around having fun. I posed for a few pictures while was there too.

It never is but I’m walking away from this now. I would have liked to have washed it to get all the red chalk dust off of it, and to have spent more time cleaning up letters with the white paint as well. On Friday they’re having an Easter event, and I have a dentist appointment, so I had to wrap it up Thursday night.

Crap! I forgot to post on Wednesday. Here are pictures of the Alaska stencil before getting chalked, after getting chalked and then primed with a white base coat before getting colored.

Aside from a bit of touch ups and a good cleaning, the contiguous United States are done. I still need to lay down Alaska, and color in Hawaii to be officially done-done. In a few days Casitas de Esperanza is having their first annual Easter egg hunt, for all the kids housed via Amigos de Guadalupe, and they’re accepting donations for pre-filled Easter eggs. I bought a bag of plastic eggs and chocolate candies and loaded them up. I also drew a different smiley face on a each egg.

Another fun, busy and productive day working on the map. My friend Catrina came to help paint then my other friend, Carolina, came and she brought her goddaughter, Natalie. Alex, one of the staff members at Amigos de Guadalupe, hung out and gave us a hand too. We made so much progress and we’re a lot closer to being done.

We had 5 volunteers today to help us with our murals. We covered a lot of ground, no pun intended. I was so busy I forgot to take pictures but we did stop for a pizza break. Tomorrow I’m hoping to finish painting the top half, lay down the stencil for the bottom and Alaska and start painting some more.

I had a few volunteers help me paint today and we still didn’t get far. I thought the whole top half was going to be finished and the bottom half chalked by the end of the day. The asphalt is really difficult to paint with a brush and the mini rollers work better but some letters are too small for the roller. There was a fair amount of trial and error today. I hope I can finishing painting the top half tomorrow and be 100% done by Monday night.

Another busy day! This morning I went to Local Color to pick up and pounce the missing piece of the map that didn’t print last time. At home I cut the new pieces and taped them to the main stencils. Later, I went to Home Depot for some supplies before going to Casitas de Esperanza and priming the Hawaiian islands with white paint. I’m hoping that on Friday I can start painting the states in color after making another stencil transfer.

Today at Local Color, Ben from Brush House printed out my map on 5 long sheets of paper and trained me how to operate an electro-pounce to make a stencil. I took me about 8-9 hours to finish. Now I gotta assemble the stencil and hope that tomorrow, when I hit it with powdered chalk, I get a good transfer on the coarse asphalt.

I burned the midnight oil getting this done. Later, I gotta figure out how I’m gonna transfer the image on to the asphalt to start painting. As of right now I’m planning on a large print then pouncing holes in it to make a stencil. For now I’m gonna take a nap.

Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky & Tennessee are done. Up next is Mississippi.

I had a late start again tonight and only vectorized 7 states. Earlier today I picked the 5 different color paints I’ll be using and made a color mock up.

It’s got nothing to do with them ending their mask mandate early. Instead it’s fitting the name into the shape of the state, and making it look good. As you can see in the previous sketches below, it’s already gone through a couple revisions. I’m not 100% in love with the current version so it might get changed again before I’m done.

I vectorized a few more states today. Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico & North Dakota are done.

I’m finally getting around to vectorizing & finalizing my US map design. Afterwards I’ll need to figure out the best way to transfer the design to asphalt to paint into a playground as well as making prints to sell.

The sketch is done. As per usual, it was more work than I anticipated.

I sketched 5 more state names tonight as I slowly travel east.

Here’s my sketch for the project I mentioned yesterday. The idea would be to paint the names of all 50 states on concrete and make it as colorful as possible. I’ll wait to see what the organizers think before finishing this in case they have other ideas.

Trump supporters stormed the United States Capitol Building today and I've been watching news and videos all day. I hope there are serious repercussions from all this but I really doubt it.

AKA: Netflix and Eat.

The sticker I left at the top of the Sycamore Switchbacks Trail at Alum Rock Park was claimed. I left it yesterday about an hour before the park closed. I thought maybe some kids had found it but it turned out to be a hiker who I crossed paths with at the bottom of the trail. He picked it up soon after I left it and he DM'd me on Instagram today and let me know. The Gram's been pretty quiet all day while we wait on the presidential election results. I uploaded my latest creation which was a picture of my head with a body made out of multiple pictures of my head. It's simple but fucking weird and it made me laugh out loud. I also got back to redrawing the letters on the Layla-Mae project, Next I'm gonna ink the background. We'll see what happens tomorrow.

Last night I read the Santa Clara County voters guide that came in the mail and today I read through all the California state propositions online. I spent about 6 hours reading all the propositions, their analyses, the arguments in favor, rebuttals to the arguments in favor, arguments against, and rebuttals to the arguments against, before making my decisions and filling out my ballot. I sealed and signed my envelope and tomorrow (election day) I plan to drive to the registrar of voters and drop it off myself to avoid any fuckery at the polling place or sending it by mail. I'm hoping that on the night of the election, and the days to follow, aren't a total shit show. I've seen pictures and videos of store fronts being boarded up in anticipation of civil unrest.