Early Morning Mural

From a long hiatus of being wonderfully overwhelmed, here is a little bit of what I've been up to. (Aren't blogs all about haituses anyways?) :P

Recently I was commissioned to paint a mural at a new print boutique called "Early Morning", which is opening up in the mall. It's a retail store that provides you with a rainbow full of blank fine cut 'n sew garments that allows for you to print whatever you'd like.

The machine that is used to print the shirts is the same machine that Ed Hardy and Diesel uses for their printed apparel. In short, it is amazing! It uses water based inks, and silkscreens full CMYK + white plate (to get bright, vibrant prints on dark apparel). There are no color limitations, no minimums, no set up fees and all that good stuff. It is ideal for anyone looking to either have and own unique, one of a kind clothing, either of your own making or one of the Early Morning designers, or if you have booths, retail space and so forth, you can get your inventory at wholesale.

Anyways, to learn more about the boutique, go to EarlyMorning.us

Back to what I've been up to.. we came up with the idea of having GORT, from The Day the Earth Stood Still, being this ominous, over-lord character that draws the viewer in. It was to incorporate alien/ufo imagery, earth and some bursts. The store is super monochromatic, so I went with that color scheme but with one power color. It was intended to be over the top, in your face.

Here is the concept sketch: (The inner gray rectangle represents a 5ft x 6ft canvas that the character is placed on, then breaks the canvas to fill the whole wall) - Wall = 9ft x 16ft

Process painting (pic 'n vid)

Final stages

(size comparison - click to enlarge)

I cut out the eye and replaced it with this translucent film that was backlit by LEDs. I also fabricated 3-dimensional laser beams that come out of the eye and attach to the window, trying to further bring the character off of the canvas. Lastly, there were to be UV lights that would light up all of the fluorescent orange, really bringing it to life.

Before I got to the finishing touches, we took the paper off of the windows, stood back and realized the concept was way too ironic for the concept of the store and didn't fit the mall setting.

I ended up putting up a vinyl wall print of a pattern made from their logo. There will be a merch table set in front to bring more attention to the clothing.

Here's the final wall - concept  / production (UV vinyl print) / final