This is the piece I did for the Heavy Metal Art Show. Thank you Dan Shuta for shooting a picture of it.

Rain, rain, go away. Come again another month.

Nathan came to visit me at the wall today. He is the one who referred the project to me, and he worked with me on "A Scanner Darkly." He's a fantastic artist that constantly seeks new ways to challenge the viewers perceptions and beliefs on what art is or should be. He is also a great friend and peer. You would be a fool to not check out his

website
. He's got more work up on the Scanner

website
.

yay! new photo... too tired to write though. feet too sore. going to the couch for a little rest.

Another angle showing the drawing that has yet to be painted over.

In case you were wondering, I start out drawing the different musicians in pencil and this is what they look like before I paint them.

I had a good time hanging out with Alicia’s parents, Barb and Dave, and her sister Laura last night. We ate out at Trudy's
, which is pretty much the only place we have taken them, since I’m so un-informed about cool places to eat. I love their Mexican Martini’s and food, so we had a blast. Then we drove downtown to go see the Heavy Metal art show at the Continental Club

First day back from Thanksgiving and I was feeling a little sluggish. We ate a lot of good food and got to hang out with my family, which was so great! I miss everyone already.
We also got to install a new sound system in Harts N Crafts, which was an all day affair. I crawled around in the attic cutting holes in the ceiling for the new speakers and wired them up to the amp. This was hard on my legs and the front half of my feet are sooo sore still. In the end, my brother David came to the rescue and hooked up the wiring correctly in the the back of amp to actually get the sound going, and boy it sounds great!
So today Alicia's parents are in town and we're about to go to eat, so have a great weekend to you all!

I had a little time this morning to go paint on the wall before we left for thanksgiving and I managed to finish Redd Volkart's face. It's totally on the other side of the wall, which is good cuz now I can say I reached the other side.

The weather was fantastic today! I was out there at 8am this morning and it was still a little chilly. By afternoon it was very sunny and hot, but with a cool breeze.
The good weather made it much easy to work straight through and get a lot done - three different faces. I'm definitely getting a lot faster now, and I didn't spend as much time figuring out proportions. One factor that made it quicker was working on the top characters, there wasn't as much detail to cover in the clothing. Especially compared to that last guy I drew. So I was really happy with how everything came together.
Jimmy La Fave stopped by South Austin Music and took a peek at the mural. I wanted to talk to him, but he just waved from a distance and walked back inside. Maybe he'll stay longer once I have his face up on the wall. Should be one of the three or four people I do next.
Yesterday I spent time working on the adjustments to the design to fix that 6inch dilemma. With it being such a short distance like that, I knew it wasn't going to be a big deal to correct it, so I shrunk a few heads and moved a couple guys around slightly. In the end, most will probably never catch that anything changed from the last design, and I think it actually looks better now.
ANyway, tomorrow I'm working from early in the morning til noon, and then we're leaving to go to Waco for Thanksgiving. I finally get to see and hang out with family, which is exciting because I feel like I haven't seen them in months... and not for longer than a day. So we're going to have it at my sister Julie's house and the rest of my brothers and sisters are driving in for the week too! I'm going to try and keep sketching and drawing while I'm there, so if I find a scanner, I'll post something on here when I get a chance. If I can't find a scanner, I may have to wait til Friday when I get back. Happy Thanksgiving if I don't hear from ya before then!

Another fun day painting on the wall, but I figured out an unfortunate fact. I decided to go ahead and draw everyone's outline on the bottom row to check my measurements line up correctly, thanks to Kevin and Nathan's advice. Turns out my wall is about 6 inches shorter than I anticipated. It doesn't sound like much, but it's roughly half of one character's head. SO I've got to make one last change to the mural's design to have it perfect and ready. The good news is that it will take me roughly three days to finish the other half of design, so I've got some time.

Jack.

Today was great! Everything came easy and the weather was astonishing. So cold in the morning and then nice and hot during mid day. The sun felt good. I can't wait to wake up and do it over again tomorrow. Plus, Alicia gets home tomorrow night. YAY!!!

I took yesterday off for Alicia's birthday and how lucky that was. It was frightfully windy all day and my sister-in-law actually had a branch blow through her roof and come down into her closet just a few feet from where she was sitting. Yikes! So I got to work again today in almost no wind. It was a bit chilly at 7am when I got there, but I knocked out one more character fully and about three other characters partially in pencil. Pretty productive. Hopefully I can get a lot inking done tomorrow. I'm also planning on working from right to left now and work my way back into the middle to try and avoid inconsistency in my painting from being too obvious. Since I am getting better at it each day.

I took this photo early this morning and then returned home after feeling sick. I've had a scratchy throat for a couple days now and it has steadily grown into all over achiness and soreness. I'm going to rest this morning and play it by ear this afternoon. Myabe I can squeeze in a half day. It's frustrating though, since I'm so excited and ready to knock out some more painting.

If you were anxiously awaiting this post, sorry to disappoint. In my excitement to see my wife home tonight, I rushed back without taking the pic. check back tomorrow for to see the progress.

This is the new pmc (post measurement catastrophe) version of my mural design. I'm still fussing with the colors, but the design looks a lot cleaner now and clearer.

Meet Mercury Charlie. He owns South Austin Speed Shop
and drives past my mural everyday to go to work. We even share the same parking lot. Anyway, he stopped in to introduce himself and to inquire what was going on, and was excited to hear that one of his clients, Charlie Sexton, was going to be up on the wall shortly. I showed him the print out of the design and he approved. Said it looked just like him... Whew!

Bill stopped by to check out my progress this morning before he went in to work. He knows a lot about guitars and worked at South Austin Music long before it had that name. He said he took a short hiatus at the guitar center, but is glad to be back working at a low stress job.

I had a good long day on the wall, but first I was up most of the night working on finishing the full illustrated version of the mural in Illustrator. I wound up adding one guy, and shuffling people around a bit. I think it's drastically improved in terms of readability, but I'm unhappy with color balance right now. I wish Alicia was here to give me her opinion since she's the goddess of color and will surely know what to do.
While out on the wall I managed to draw in Kelly Willis and begin inking her and the girl beside her. I really wanted to make sure to get her right, so I took extra time fussing with proportions. I'm starting to get a knack for guessing where the lines should be without too much trouble, so I'm sure before long I will be whipping them out.

I didn't mention this yesterday, but I was interviewed by M.E. (Music Entertainment) Television in the morning and they want to come back periodically to record the progress and then interview me again when it's complete. It's exciting to hear the buzz from the people that come up to talk to me on the street too. Several cars drove into the parking lot and circled around to stop and watch for a while.

Can you tell I took this picture towards the evening time? I began the day drawing again in pencil and of course you can't really see that part, but I also was able to begin painting in the black. I'm still adjusting to how to use water-based house paint, which tends to be thick and runny. I was getting this dry brush look in the beginning and no sensitivity to the brush stroke. So I went and bought a variety of smaller brushes to work on parts like the eyes, and once I began to thin out the paint a bit with water, I was able to get long beautiful brush strokes without having to redip my brush 12 times.

The first day I was able to begin laying down the design in pencil on the brick, but it may be too difficult to see in this photo.

Every painting begins with a blank canvas. This was completed a few days back, but I made a huge mistake in measuring, so I had to go back to the drawing board to fix up my design. Things are looking a lot better now, though I haven't quite finished filling in all the gaps. I'll have the design up before the weekend.

Our "Heavy Metal" show opened last night at the Continental Club in South Austin. What a success! The art was beautiful, the show had good continuity, and a lot of people came through. This is a picture of most of the artists who took part. From left to right, me, Ryan Parker, Joe Riley, Dan Shuta, Monique Ligons, Melita Curphy (miss monster), kevin peake, and then two people I didn't know.