It’s not unusual for me to find the tint of liquid watercolor staining my hands, but paint in my hair? That’s not usually a hazard of working with watercolor in my own art studio.
On a crisp Sunday morning earlier this month I bundled up and joined my friend and fellow artist Nic to help with his latest mural project. For the past few weeks he has been hard at work transforming the once blank wall of what once was the Rice Bowl restaurant in Beaverdale (soon to be Basic Bird, a Korean fried chicken eatery) into a black and white coloring book.
“Asian delicacies like daikon radish and dumplings that smile cheekily at drivers and pedestrians as they pass.”
Nic’s style is perfectly suited for the space with his gentle, but graphic lines and punchy color palette. His characters range from human to animal to vegetable including Asian delicacies like daikon radish and dumplings that smile cheekily at drivers and pedestrians as they pass.
Indeed, we caught the attention of many who stopped by to check Nic’s progress and comment on the colorful (even delicious!) transformation happening before their eyes.
After arriving, coffee in hand, Nic soon had me set with a bucket of burnt orange paint and brush painting much like one would complete a paint-by-numbers following his carefully planned design filling in shadows and adding depth between his black outlines.
I had originally planned to stay until noon, but three hours later I stood back, paint decorating my hands (and later I’d realize also hair!) and couldn’t help but smile at what we had accomplished. My own work is bite-size compared to the scale of this project, and while I only added a small part to Nic’s amazing design, I am so grateful that I could lend a hand to help create something bigger than myself.
