Mr. Big City’s hand painted graphics and sign painting skills got a bit of a workout over the last couple of weeks with this project!

At Hutchinson Middle School in La Mirada CA, a project I had painted in 2016 had to be repainted because the entire MPR building got a much-deserved remodel. The client at that time had given me pretty free reign to create a graphic hawk mascot inside the campus and a “Welcome” mural on the entry side of the building. Here are some details on the project.

A little history on the hawk mascot design might be interesting — he started as a photo that I traced in Adobe Illustrator with a Wacom pen and tablet in color layers. The idea was to create a kind of paint-by-numbers graphic look. Below is how that tracing looked in progress. Trust me - it got better looking as it moved toward completion! The second photo shows the paint being mixed for each color.

Next, on site, the painting began. First, the base coat…

Then on to filling in colors…

At the end of this part of the project, the hand painted hawk mascot mural looked like this:

Next, the entry side of the school got a fairly large “Welcome” mural, including their Distinguished School Award and Gold Ribbon Award. This was to be painted on the same rough stucco surface. The design is transferred to the wall with paper patterns, pushing charcoal through the tiny holes traced on the lines of the design.

So then it was off to the races, painting the colors in…

And here is how the final project looked. The school was very happy with the results!

Here are a couple of detail photos of the California Distinguished School Award sign, and the Gold Ribbon Award sign — both hand painted on rough stucco…

You might be thinking about getting this kind of project done, Do you know where to start? I can tell you - contact me, Paul Borne (president of Big City Signs) to find out more.

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