About 3 months ago I had the pleasure of working with Justice Law Corp on one of my favorite projects so far; a mural for their new office space in Pasadena, California. The client reached out to me with an idea of what they wanted to create.

The client wanted to have a phrase hand-lettered and around that phrase some illustrations of different cities of California, oil drills, workers and truck drivers and more…

First thing I do before taking a project is to ask the client if they have a mood-board or image references they can provide. If the client is serious about the project they will always have a image references, this is a good sign because they know what they want already. For this project, the client provided me with the image references but I didn’t stop there. I went ahead and also created a mood-board to help get more inspiration from different artists.

Once you have an idea of what the client wants then you can start working on the concept sketches. I submitted the first 3 concept sketches with the ideas I liked. It took me about 3 days to have them all done. Don’t forget to mock-up the ideas, it always looks better and the client can visualize how it will look like on the wall.

Round 1

The client picked a couple of ideas from each concept so basically the 3 ideas merged in one but they were not sure about the yellow at that time, also the client changed the phrase of the main lettering to something more related to their business.

I always give my clients 2 rounds of revisions depending on the project and their budget. Limiting the amount of revisions will help speed the design process and the client will take seriously that all revisions are requested.

Round 2

Since the client wasn’t sure about the yellow, they wanted grey but I told the client that I do not recommend grey as the background color because it can look dirty so I gave another option and used light bluish grey instead which happens to be their brand’s color.

After not much deliberation, the client agreed really loved the yellow color and even decided to paint the wall next to it.

Here’s the final approved lettering design / mock up:

FIRST DAY ON-SITE

The first day on-site was “Sketching day” I started around 10:30 AM and proceeding with projecting the artwork in sections. The reason I had to section the artwork was because the space was small between the wall and the elevator. I had to use the elevator space now and then to be able to project the design.

“Every mural has its own challenges” - The Inking Rose

One of the challenges I faced the first day was that there was a lot of traffic coming from workers walking to the elevator so I had to stop projecting for long period of time. This caused a delay but I managed to have it all sketched the first day. However, I usually try to start painting the first day.

Because of this, I decided to reach out to some friends for help.

“It’s okay to ask for help when you need it!”

SECOND DAY ON-SITE

Once you have the sketch you can proceed with giving the first coat of paint. Always start with the background colors. So I started with the whites because the yellow background was already painted.

I realized that day that the lack of light coming in was an issue and at one point I really couldn’t see what I was doing. I had only estimated about 3 days of work and was already running out of time… Luckily, my friends Huyen and Alex came to the rescue.

THIRD DAY ON-SITE

This day, I focused on cleaning the wall and giving the last coat of paint, perfecting outlines and basically just adding the final touches. With help the wall took me approximately 32 hours of work.

The client expressed how happy it was with the result of the mural! See screenshot below.