Life Update | Mural Painting

Painting Our Biggest and Best Mural Yet — Between the Poppies

We are finished! Life Update — June 28, 2023

For those that normally follow my weekly updates, you might notice that this time I added a sub-title with ‘life update’ as opposed to ‘weekly wrap-up’. You will likely also have noticed that the last ‘weekly update’ I did was almost four weeks ago.

So many of my recent editions of this report have started with apologizing for the delay in getting these out. So I am not going to do that anymore. From now on, these posts will simply be called ‘life updates’ and I hope they keep everyone in the loop about our art and travels, in the same way that the weekly edition did. I can’t say for sure how frequent these will be, I can only say that they will happen when I feel inspired to fill you in on what we have been up to.

So let’s get started!

First of all, we finished our mural!

How long did this mural take?

We have never tracked our time with our murals before as we have always done them for free. But this time we are getting paid, and people have asked us many times how long the project has taken us. While I have no intention of going back through our calendar to pinpoint exactly how many hours we spent, I can say that the project took us 5 weeks and we worked approximately 20 hours per week. This equals 100 hours. Each.

It’s kind of funny how our Western society is so obsessed with time and how long things take. Realizing this and seeing this as a sort of outsider these days, has made me realize how detached from time and time limits we are since we left our conventional life in 2017.

One of my favorite sayings lately is that we have “nowhere to be and all day to get there.” I’m not sure if I heard it from someone else at some point, or if I just made it up myself, but it certainly fits the feeling of contentment that we have in our lives these days.

We have really enjoyed the process of painting this mural. So many people stopped by to tell us how much they liked it. We even had people honking at us from passing cars and yelling, “Awesome job!” out their windows.

We don’t necessarily do this for us

This project has made us realize that we don’t necessarily paint these murals for ourselves. Well, of course, in one sense we do. We get immense joy from doing them and it satisfies our creative urges like nothing else.

But we don’t paint them for us to enjoy, rather, they are painted for others to enjoy. Once we paint a mural, we leave it behind and will rarely see it again. Well, in this case, since this is my hometown, we will likely see this one again, but not frequently.

I believe that art is meant to uplift people. We are happy to be able to leave bits and pieces of ourselves scattered around the world and hope to always be Spreading Love Through Art.

Though this project had a bit of a solemn theme to it, we also put a lot of effort into bringing in lots of poppies and providing bits and pieces of joy and happiness as well. We certainly don’t want our murals to make anyone sad or depressed if we can help it.

As I mentioned in my last update, “Zoning In On Our Latest Mural Project”, I have felt so honored to have been able to leave this piece of ourselves in my hometown. And on the side of one of the last places in town where the true Canmore locals gather on a regular basis. It truly could not have been a more perfect scenario for us. The article above also explains the significance of the image and what it means to the organization that has it on its wall.

And so, here we are, on the other side of our first official PAID mural job.

How does it feel to get paid for our gifts?

I’m sure you are wondering how it feels to be paid to do something that we find ultimate joy in doing? Well, the truth is, it feels pretty darn good. We have done over 20 free mural projects in the past 5 years to get to this point, though.

We didn’t start out on our travels as mural painters, it is something that evolved over time.

If you have read my article “We Fled War In Nicaragua and Discovered Our Passion” you will know how mural painting came to be a thing in our lives. Call it fate, destiny or downright good luck, but an opportunity fell in our laps that severely changed the course of our futures, and we could never predict where that fateful day would lead us.

We continue to appreciate those that let us practice and learn how to paint on their walls.

It has truly been such a remarkable ride.

We will be in the news!

We were interviewed by the local newspaper, the Rocky Mountain Outlook, and tomorrow the new edition comes out, so we are eager to see what they have to say. Hopefully, it leads to more promotion and awareness of what we are trying to accomplish with our brand — Artistic Voyages.

How did this project come to be?

Another question a lot of people have asked is how we were chosen to do this project.

Back when we were last in Canada, in 2019, the then-president of the Canmore Legion had heard that we painted murals. At that point, we had only really painted three significant projects in Costa Rica, Guatemala and Nevis, an island in the Caribbean. We were nowhere near as skilled as we are now, and I actually shudder at the possibility that this might have been painted before our last three years of practicing and fine-tuning our skills.

In fact, I can say with utmost certainty at this point that in 2019 we were not ready for a large project like this one.

Since we were there in the fall of 2019, the season for outdoor painting had passed and the president asked us if we would still be in Canada in June when the weather would improve again.

The answer from both of us was a resounding, “NO!” We had no intention of staying in Canada for the winter and it was bad enough that we didn’t get a chance to leave until January. Yeah, it was -36C the day we left. And we swore that we would never put ourselves through that torture again!

Anyways, we all know what happened next. Covid came and changed the world and many people's lives in the blink of an eye.

For 3 years we spent most of our time in Africa but did also visit Turkey and Eastern Europe. We painted many different murals in many different locations. All were painted for free in exchange for accommodation, and all the while we were fine-tuning our skills and finding ways to stay out in the world during this crazy time.

With each project, we became more confident and faster.

Upon our return to Canada this time, I made a joke to Chris that maybe we could paint a mural on the legion while we were here. But it truly was in jest as I assumed that by now they would have gotten somebody to do one for them if they were serious about it. But I also forgot that it was during Covid, and literally, nothing happened during that crazy time.

One night my mom happened to be in the legion and asked one of the board members if they still wanted a mural painted. “Oh, I don’t know anything about it,” the lady said.

So Mom told her the story from 2019 to bring her up to date. She told my mom to tell us to write up a proposal with what the design would look like and how much we wanted to be paid.

“We are having a board meeting next Tuesday. If she can get the proposal together I would be happy to bring it up.”

At the time this transpired, Chris and I were visiting his mom in another part of Alberta. My mom phoned us there to tell us the news.

We had three days to get our idea and proposal in, so we got straight to work.

My Dad stopped by the location to take a photograph of the wall so that we could make a drawing on it. This is how we tend to plan things these days, by drawing on our iPad. These mock-ups give clients a real-life visualization of the final product. At least a concept of it.

The project size was difficult to determine from the picture. I couldn’t remember what the wall looked like in real life, and we ended up lowballing the price because of it. So although we did get paid for this job, we really didn’t get paid much.

But it doesn’t matter!

We are taking graceful and unforced baby steps to get where we are going, and that is just fine with us.

Already we have another project in town and we priced it much better than this one:)

But whose idea is each painting?

We get this question once in a while as well. The truth is that it is hard to say. Somehow, we both start talking about ideas and scenes that we have in our minds, then we fine-tune and whittle it down into a drawing. Once we have the drawing, we can make further fine-tuning or paint it as is.

Of course, the final product will always be different than the initial mock-up. In our example, you can full well see that there are more details in the final product than there were in the concept drawing. But it gives people an idea of what to expect.

Once in a while, we will get a project where we each get to work on our own sections or walls. When this happens, we paint our own concepts and don’t have to worry about coming up with an idea together. But when we are both working on the same project, and we are combining our skillsets and styles, sometimes things get heated.

I will have a vision for one thing, and he will start painting his vision of another, or vice-versa. Then we have to have a little dance to decide who gets their way. It’s like we each have to state our case and why we think our way is best, and try and win each other over to our way. It’s usually comical and we can resolve these instances pretty quickly these days, but it has led some passersby to wonder what the heck we are arguing about, I’m sure.

How do you decide who paints what?

These days we have realized that we do best when we each have our own sections to work on, even within the same mural. So, as we go along, one of us will say, “Were you wanting to paint the leaves or do you want me to?” Something like that. When one takes on the responsibility of a certain aspect of the mural, they are fully responsible. It is almost impossible for both of us to paint something to look the same as each other.

For this past mural, for example, I had done most of the poppy foliage but fully thought that Chris would take on the final highlighting and shading since I feel that he is better at that than I am. However, trying to bring him on mid-project after I had already done some of it, was a disaster. No matter how hard he tried, he just couldn’t get his leaves to look like mine. So we realized that I had to see them through to the end because I was the one who started them and knew the vision. So he then took on the poppy heads and saw them through to the end.

We always learn interesting insights on each project, and this one was no exception.

What’s Next?

As mentioned earlier, we already have another project that we are working on concepts for and getting ready to do, which we are really excited about.

Getting paid to beautify the world and bring joy to people's lives is surely a dream come true.

I can’t imagine that there is anywhere for us to go but up moving forward. But we are still taking things one day at a time. We make a conscious effort to not get too far ahead of ourselves and we know that what is meant to be, will transpire in the most beautiful unfolding.

That seems to be the way with us these days.

Thanks so much for reading about our latest mural project! If you would like to learn more about our murals, please visit our website at www.artisticvoyages.com/murals. Most of our past projects are on there and the latest one will be getting added soon:)

I’m tagging those who have requested to be tagged in my weekly wrap-ups. If you would like to be tagged, please let me know and I will add you to the list.

Robert | Louise | Adrienne | Kim | Mia | Michele | Ivy | Erika | Anne | Sandra | Julie | Bruce | JoAnn | Louise | Lysergic World Design

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