FauxPaintingSystems: Make it Greeeennnaaahhhh!

This post I'm naming "Make It greener" because Art in it's truest sense is totally subjective. When Whistler wrote the book "The Gentle Art of Making Enemies," (hehehe) he argued that art is not about right or wrong, nor good or bad. Art is subjective. Art is essentially about what you like or dislike. You say you like pink. I say I like blue or green or whatever. But Whistler's arguement was not about whether you liked "his" art or not. Just don't call it good or bad. It isn't about morality... it's about personal taste and preference.

     You might like sunrises but I like sunsets. If you like it, well, it's ART to you. I never understood how a guy could get rich painting with sand and letting waves wash over his canvas and birds trample on it, but I can see that to him and others that it is ART. It is a style of ART. Today, I can imagine doing art while sitting on the beach and just wish a bird, a crab, a turtle would walk on it. lol  Today, I'm afraid oil is going to wash over it instead.
    So basically, I started this mural 2 months ago and suddenly there was a committee of 6 people trying to tell me what the mural should look like. How am I supposed to paint a mural and make 6 different people that view ART 6 different ways happy? What am I really to do. So I started with the basics. I knew that the wall itself needed to be painted a color so I painted it purple. I chose purple because I knew the owner of the motel, the one paying me, likes purple. Then I left for a month.
      After giving the owner some time to think. While attempting to block out the choir of people singing the mural tune, I started making suggestions, showing pictures, listening, until I came up with a simple mural idea that seemed to make the owner happy. I could feel it in my gut that it was right. I even had a picture. Then as an artist, I had to make a decision to just block out the committee and go for what I believed to be right. In doing so, I had to pick a style and also make it work in a tight budget, I picked a simple block style, almost like paper cutouts or graphics on a computer, with a few added stylized touches. So here it is from start to finish. I even had a blond female hang her head out her old black Cadillac Convertible and wave an arm and give a Whoohoo! I love it!
     I was in mural heaven! To me it is very simple. But in the end, it was just right!

The basic idea is at the bottom of the page. It was 2 palm trees and a hammock that was stitched into a bedspread at the hotel. Very beachy and simple. It was all done freehand with no measuring tape.

I started with the tree trunks. I used a red and mixed in some black pigment. The other colors I picked from the oops pile of paints at the paint store. I knew I could mix up any color with lights and darks and a few raw pigments if necessary. They just needed to be exterior paint

The next step I added the stylized palm leaves. The green I picked was a lighter green because I knew the owner didn't like dark colors. It did not stand out enough from the street, so I added a dark shadow line underneath and later a lighter line on top that in natural light would reflect sunlight. Then I added a light colored hammock and added shadow lines and lighter lines that reflect the sun on it as well, giving the hammock depth. In the end, I believe everybody was happy with the mural, especially the owner. I can always add a few more things later if I choose, a few birds or some seagrass, but for now it is done.