CALDERA TAP HOUSE PAINTING

Here's a photo of me putting the finishing touches on the painting I've been posting about these past couple weeks. The new Caldera Tap House is set to open to the public on Monday, and there's an invite-only opening tomorrow night in Ashland, Oregon. This photo was taken last night, so glad I got this done in time.

ALMOST DONE

Almost done with this painting for the new Caldera Tap House in Ashland, Oregon. As you can see in this photo, the wall is fairly rough, but I think overall the painting has come out well. All that's left now is to fill in the oval and then it's on to finishing work, including drawing the black outlines for the individual hop leaves, and also drawing black outlines around the edges of all green leaves and the barley at the bottom. A friend recommended using a paint pen, which is a great idea, as then the width of the line would be consistent.

CALDERA TAP HOUSE, PART 4

Almost done with this painting at the new Caldera Tap House in Ashland, Oregon. Getting the yellow to orange fade was not as hard as I'd thought; I just went for it and painted as fast as I could before the paint could dry. A friend suggested using matte medium or gesso to help with the blend, but I just used straight house paints and a fairly dry brush.

CALDERA TAP HOUSE, PART 3

Well, if you've been reading my blog recently you'll know I'm working on the painting of the Ashland Amber label for the inside of the new Caldera Tap House in Ashland, Oregon. It's amazing how long it takes to paint something like this. After finishing all the green leaves, I think I need to go back in and make the yellow veins a little narrower, which can be done by painting into them a little bit with the green paint. The tricky part will be the orange to red fade for the sunset sky above the mountain. Someone suggested I just paint a solid orange up to the banner (see original image below for reference), and then paint red above the banner, which is probably what I'll do. This housepaint stuff just doesn't blend well at all, and with the uneven surface of the wall it'd be very hard to pull off an even fade.

CALDERA TAP HOUSE

It's amazing how long it takes to paint just a little bit. Yesterday I spent about five hours painting this image, and I still have a ways to go. The Caldera Tap House is supposed to open this Monday, so I have a lot of work to do between now and then, but at least the place is air conditioned with satellite radio.

CALDERA TAP HOUSE

Today was supposed to be the official opening day of the new Caldera Tap House in Ashland, Oregon.

Of course, with only two weeks between the closing of the old Siskiyou Pub (which is the building Caldera is now using for their new tap house) and today, I knew it was optimistic to think they'd open today.

Actually, I'm glad, 'cause I would have really had to rush this painting I'm working on, and it's my first time using house paints of any kind, let alone using them for painting a large detailed image on a wall that's got a surface like the moon. I was stoked that Caldera decided to use the more expensive environmentally friendly paints, both for the greater good and for myself having to breathe the fumes while working indoors.

Below is the label I did for Caldera's Ashland Amber. There's a projector inside facing the stage, and the idea was to get the label on a CD and project it on the wall to trace. However, the DVD player the projector's hooked up to wouldn't read the CD, so I had to take this shot of the printed version with my cheap digital camera and use the DVD player's USB port to get the image to finally show up on the wall. This only took two days to figure out...


Here's a couple of shots of the paints used:



Drawing the outline on the rough wall using a slightly out-of-focus projector was a challenge, but it came out okay in the end.


I had to mix my own paints, and I screwed up the first mix of purple, which ended up being too dark for the section I used it on. I'll have to go back over it tomorrow with the right color. I added the yellow lines for the veins in the hop leaves and called it a day.

ROSEBURG REGGAE

A friend from Eugene called me and reminded me about a free reggae show in Roseburg, Oregon. I'd just seen this band in Mendocino the other day, and they were really good. Also, there's an incredible disc golf course in Roseburg called Whistler's Bend, right on the Umpqua River, so I decided to head up in the afternoon and play some disc golf and then go see this band...something I hadn't done, since, well, Saturday (see previous post below). The show featured Sly Dunbar on drums and Robbie Shakespeare on bass, in addition to some heavy hitter session musicians famous in the Jamaican reggae scene. Sly and Robbie are responsible for the creation of the reggae sound as we know it today. They've played on over 200,000 tracks, and were around in the heyday of Jamaican reggae with Bob Marley and Peter Tosh.

The show was part of the weekly free concert in the park series in Roseburg, right on the Umpqua River, and the majority of the audience had no idea who they were seeing. Just a bunch of rednecks out for a good time, they sat on the grass most of the show until the musicians, and myself, shouted at them to get up and dance. The camera angle/focus I used was to capture Sly Dunbar on drums, as there was no other vantage point from the front of the stage where he was visible.

TRIFECTA

Just got back from the Sierra Nevada World Music Festival yesterday. Most of my family was at a wedding in Wisconsin this past weekend, but I wasn't able to attend due to not knowing when my magazine deadline would be officially over. It was Friday afternoon and some friends said they were travelling down to Mendocino County in their '71 VW bus, and had room for one passenger. I packed all my stuff, and remembered their was supposed to be a disc golf course at a brewery near where the show was, so I grabbed my favorite discs just in case. When I got there I asked someone where the Anderson Valley Brewing Company was, and it was right across the street! So there I was, drinking organic microbrew, playing disc golf, and listening to Jamaicans play reggae music across the street. Truly a divine moment.

RED BUBBLE ONLINE STORE

Yesterday a friend, who used to live here in Ashland but recently moved to the Bay Area, turned me onto a site called RedBubble. It's an online store where you can sell your art, and they do all the shipping, printing, billing, etc. A t-shirt that sells on their site gets me a twenty percent commission, which isn't much on a twenty-dollar item, but it's all about volume. I just created my storefront site this evening, and linked to it from my website, and I'm curious to see who, if anyone, wants to buy my art on a t-shirt. I made iron-on transfer t-shirts for Christmas presents this year, on organic cotton tees (something I wish RedBubble offered), and they came out great. I really like how my art looks on a t-shirt more than a print or a card. Plus, people advertise your work for you just by walking around.