City of Calgary Painted Utility Box (with process)

Today I put the finishing touches on a mural painted over a utility box, as a participant in the City of Calgary's Painted Utility Box Program. I documented the process, in case the four people who read my blog are interested...




















The concept came from another piece called "Cars", which was a series of car drawings put together in photoshop. In some ways I wanted this piece, which ended up being called "Traffic Jelly", to highlight Calgary's love/lust for vehicular transport.











I rearranged the cars to fit on the template provided by the city, and then traced them with ink.





















I then coloured in photoshop, and used the Hue Saturation tool to come up with some interesting options.



















After making the final selection, I refitted the image to the template, and sent off the proposal. One note to folks: when you are putting together a proposal, make sure you fill out everything they ask you to. The project manager mentioned that many incomplete proposals did not get considered.






















Then onto the actual painting. Given the size of the images and limited time frame, along with tying it together on all four sides, I freehanded the drawing onto the box. I then painted in the black lines. I was lucky to be at the right time and place for an interview with our local tv station, who were doing a piece on the city's utility box project.

On the advice of my friend Karen, I tried to mix colours before going out to the site. I usually only got about 4 or 5 ready at the beginning of each day, which probably slowed things down, and I wish I took the time to mix all the colours at once. When the sun is pouring down onto your head and traffic is buzzing loudly nearby, it's not a great space be doing a lot of thinking, you just want to be painting.

The finished product looks good, although it took a couple of tries to get the shade of yellow just right. I still wonder about the line work, but then again it usually takes me a couple of weeks to feel satisfied with a finished project.