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.

Today was our first day working onsite at Casitas De Esperanza (Tiny Homes of Hope.) It’s a non-profit run community that provides shelters to unhoused families in downtown San Jose. I, along with a couple other artists, are going to paint murals on the ground for the kids to play on and to brighten up the place. My US map will be one of 5-6 murals getting painted this week but before I can lay down any paint I gotta get my map printed & pounced to make a stencil. I’m excited to be a part of this and can’t wait to get going!

Many thanks to Local Color for adding me on this project and Amigos De Guadalupe for operating the site.

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.

After a minor update to my heart eyes logo, and uploading it to Instagram for Valentine’s Day, I got a few comments suggesting I put the design on a shirt. That was never the plan but I’m up for it. Unfortunately I’m going to be out of town for 3 weeks so it’ll be a month, maybe more, before I could really start production. I’ve started sketching ideas for the label inside the neck that tells you the size and, depending on cost, a small graphic for the back. There’s not much else I can do till I get back besides get pricing, lock down the artwork, keep the momentum going and take some pre orders. We’ll see if people are still interested a month after Valentine’s Day for this lovie-dovie design.

Here are the three designs my friend liked from the 10 sketches I sent. They’re slightly cleaned up and with a bit of color. I’ve sent her these samples now I’m waiting on feedback before moving forward.

Here’s a sneak peek at some rough sketches for a 2” x 2” label I’m designing for a friend.

Here’s a couple snippets from a design I’m working on. Still in the early phases, and a bit rough, but slowly coming together.

The next time someone requests my design services and drops that line, I’m charging double! I’m currently working on two design projects for friends and both of them told me the same thing and gave me little to work with, expecting me to pull ideas from the ether. I came up with an idea for one of the projects, after asking my friend a bunch of questions regarding what they need from the design, and sent it it to her today. Sure enough it wasn’t what she was looking for. She then sent me a photograph as a reference to what she wants it to look like. If she had sent me the reference picture at the start it would have saved us both lots of time. So the next time a friend, or client, says to do “whatever I want” I’m gonna raise the price then offer to discount it if they come to me with a better understanding of what they’re looking for in a design.

I knocked out 10 miles of new trails Monday afternoon at Grant Park. That leaves me with approximately 5 miles of trails to hike before I can say I’ve hiked all of Joseph D. Grant County Park.

I went and did a site visit Thursday evening where I, and other local artists, are going to paint on the asphalt. I’ll be doing my USA map below. I did a quick color fill in the bottom pic to get a better idea of what it’ll look like when it’s done. More details to follow.