Free Sky Studios- Mural Blog

Hola! So, after a couple consultation meetings we finally got the green light to start on the Mexican Hacienda mural for this client. This mural is 15′ x 5′ and is on the main wall in their kitchen. The client travels to Mexico as often as they can and wanted this Mexican inspired mural as a centerpiece on their home.

Day 2 Mural Painting Closeup (click on pic for a full view)

Day 1:
After taking a series of photographs and sketching the artwork and adding components to fit within the dimensions of their wall, I spent Day 1 just laying out the wall and sketching the artwork on the wall ‘bluelining’. Architectural murals are great but getting perspective accurate on such a large scale requires a lot of time to get it correct but it looks great. I left the mural in this state and consulted with the client again before leaving for the day so they could look it over that night and give me any notes before i started painting.

Day 2:
Only had a few hours to paint but did get the sky completed, background trees and the base color for one of the main trees.

Day 3:
Thunderstorms today. Great day to paint…indoors. Spent about 4 hours working on the painting. Finished up the main tree, and annex with potted plants, steps, and shadows on the wall of the hacienda. It is coming along great.

Day 4 mural painting progress (click on pic for a full view)

Day 4:
Painted about 4 more hours, got the other tree, the patio around the tree, and all of the shading done on the cabana. The client requested a change in the tone of the shading so I spent some time making it more brown and less purple. Good edit. It looks great!

Day 5:
Bearing down…the end is in site. Really knocked out a lot of content on the left side of the mural which started to really give the painting some balance. Will be finishing up soon…

Day 6:
Finished up the bird cage. Poor birds…they were free and now they are caged. Worked on the rest of the ground work, stairs, blocking in color. Discussed final coloring and details with the client. Looking good!

After the completion of the Sunstone Mural done for the Maya Buffet in Springfield, Illinois, the owners requested an additional piece to be added based off of a hand embroidered Aztec cloth featuring a traditional Aztec Warrior. Free Sky Studios muralist Michael Mayosky added the additional background showing a fiery Aztec temple in the background and the parrot resting on the window.

After following up with the owner a few weeks after this mural was completed he reported he was very happy with the work and his business has increased thier sales nearly 50%.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE FULL GALLERY OF PHOTOS

One of the nicest set of interior murals painted by Mike has to be the set of alcoves and Greek themed statues painted at Augies Front Burner in downtown Springfield, IL. This long, narrow restaurant has a very sophisticated menu and ambiance to match thanks in a large part to the magnificent murals painted throughout.

Quite honestly the images added to the gallery do not do these murals justice. BEcause of the low light in the restaurant and the high gloss finish of the walls, getting good images is very hard to do. We are working to set up a photo shoot and will update the gallery as soon as we do.

- view this gallery -

Well, over the weekend Mike went out and pulled an all nighter and kicked out the mural shown here for the Maya Buffet Restaurant in downtown Springfield, IL.

We had previously researched the Aztec sunstone and got the approval to do a simplified version of one on the side of the businesses wall. The surface was already prepped and ready to go so Mike dedicated himself to the project and finished it in a single night! As you can see, it turned out very well…

-view the project-

Dominic does not fit in at the nursery

Who doesn’t love cute tales of nature and the outdoors? Well, at least I enjoy them and think they are great fun to illustrate. This project is for  children’s book about Dominic, an orphaned tree. I started working on this project after meeting with author Audrey Lazarus and reading the manuscript of the adorable story she created. She had seen my work through a previous book I illustrated ( A Mouse Named Tree) and wanted me to bring life to her characters she had created. No problem!

After doing a few character studies and sketches for her to go over and approve I set about to create all the pencil sketches to work from. This is the hardest and longest stage but it is finally done.

Please take some time and check out the gallery of these images.

Mike painting Marilyn for the Route 66 Mother Road Festival

Once again, thanks in part to Mike’s busy schedule, he started working on painting the window of Cafe Brio for the annual Route 66 Mother Road Festival the night before it began.

“I am not grandstanding, I’m just a procrastinator..and very busy!”

Mike started working on this mural at 1a.m. the night before the cruise started and should have it done well…by now unless the distraction of the thousands of patrons is too much for him. Who’s complaining though. Talk about good PR!

“This year I went with the theme of “From Chicago to Hollywood”"

The mural depicts the famous Hollywood Hill with Marilyn Monroe (as pictured here) with Al Capone representing the “Chicago Connection” opposite Marilyn.

Mike has done several Route 66 themed murals and commissioned art pieces so work like this is becoming second nature to our business. Keep checking back; we will get them posted as soon as we can as well as more images and video from this piece!

…have fun at the Cruise Mike! See you in the morning!

- view photo gallery of this project -

click on the image to view the video

On Thursday September 18th, our wonderfully talented lead artist, Mike Mayosky was interviewed while painting the alley project for the Trout Lily Cafe.

link to the article on the WCIA site

Springfield Murals

Mike has just finished up a very nice mural in the alley on the north side of the Trout Lily Cafe in downtwon Springfield, Illinois. The drab alleywall is a popular walkway with a lot of the downtown workers and we recieved many positive comments from people walking by. The historic building really needed a little pizazz and life. The mural definitely did just that.

VIEW THE GALLERY SLIDESHOW

Keeping with the progress of trying to keep the world informed  of what is happening with our fine company, we have just finished setting up this lovely blog. Please take a minute to  sign up to receive RSS feeds and stay up to date on everything that we are doing. We have a lot of projects to get loaded onto the site so don’t forget to keep checking back for more awesome artwork.