Today we got the blue fade painted in for the backdrop to the statue of liberty. We also did a floor of brownstones. Ryan and I have decided that we are still not sick of the Ramon and noodles. We really like it. I am wondering if I can get some kind of sponsoreship from them. :) Can you see it now as we paint just banners and backdrops promoting the tastiest noodle around. Oh gawd!
Well we thought it was gonna rain today and we ended up with a clear day so we woke up and pour ourselves a bowl of Ramon Noodles(breakfast of champions) and got to work. We did another 2 floors with architectural features, shaded the original ones we did including the pilars and I lost my glasses in the abyss. No worries though because it is a lot less scary when my vision is blurred. Tomorrow we will be adding the blue sky and going up to the 7 and 8th floor adding stones. Good times! :)
Todays interview with a local Brooklyn Resident is with Barry Clarke. Great guy who showed us the ropes when we first got here. He is a GC from Celtic Construction.
Playing poker while rains.
Well it rained yesterday and is raining today so no work on the building for us. We are doing a little in-house work that needs to be done for the building. Ryan also has an obsession with poker so we have been playing a lot of poker (a lot)! We hit an Irish pub up last night which was real cool. This morning we checked the weather and we made catch a break and be able to work tomorrow.
(Local interviews with Emily and Frank.)
Emily is a waitress from down the street we met. She graduated from Pratt and is a pretty good artist. She did a whole bunch of window paintings up and down the street in the comercial spots that came out real nice.
Frank is the security for the Joralemon building. Real nice guy. He sees everybody coming and going. He has not been to see our mural as of yet but we will make him come look at it soon. :)
Today was a really good day as far as progress goes. Not only did we do 2 more stories up of brownstones we also measured out and based all the lower architecture features....and thankfully so since yes it is going to rain once again for 4 days! Can you believe it, got to laugh. Well, no worries. We are still moving along faster then we thought. And just to show you that Ryan and I aren't just sitting safely in our apartment being anti social we decided to started interviewing the locals and see how they feel about the mural. This way you can see we are squeezing ourselves right into the public and are semi-officially Brooklynites for the time being. Let's start wih Miguel who is the super at the building we are working at. Miguel has an incredible life story that he has shared with us and I feel he is just as important to this job as we are. He really watches out for us. Sooooo, heres Miguel!
500 Brownstones done, 6000 to go..........
Well today was a great day. We had to cruise to Manhatten this morning and meet the Faux Doctor so we could get to more sprayers. Once done we got back to the job and started cranking out stones. A little more then 5 floors done, not to shabby. Didn't know what day of the week it is when we got down but no worries...:) I am now getting pumped about painted the large statue of liberty. Couple more days and I can start that sucker. :) Now it is yes once again time for some Ramen and Tuna mmmmmmmmmm!
Getting Stoned.
Well today was pretty productive. Got 2 floors done and getting quicker by the minute. We only lost 4 things off the staging today so I consider that a win. Pretty tired today, just got back and cooked some more Ramon noodles and tuna. Slowly running out of Ramon though so if anyone has some please mail them out to us. :) Anyways, looking forward to tomorrow!
Pushing out is the scariest of all. LOL
Today is the second day we have painted and we finished basecoating the 1st building we are muraling. This is great news because tomorrow we get to start the mural! Can not wait. Gonna nap it out right now and then have a little tuna and Ramon noodles. MMMMMM!
RIP 18 incher.....
Very sad today we lost a dear friend, out 18 inch roller. He lived a long and prosperous life and we will never forget him. Please take a moment of silence.....
Off to Jersey due to the rain.
Tried singing "rain, rain go away" with no luck. The rain came and shut us down. So instead of sitting around we took off to Jersey to work on a job with our friend Stacey. We cruised down there and did some cloud ceilings and painted some gold. Awesome time and now we are back in NY. Looks like we will be able to paint tomorrow (mon) and Tuesday/Wednesday and then it is gonna rain for a couple more days. Unbelievably frustrating!!! Oh well though, what are you gonna do right? Spirits still high and looking forward to working a couple 12 hour days this week to try and catch up with the time already lost. One really cool thing is that we got back to the apartment we are renting and Jamie the girl we are renting it from had a huge roast cooking for us. Gotta love her!
Race against the rain!
Today was pretty productive. We finally got up on the swing stage and got to paint. We have been watching the weather online (hour by hour updates) and saw we had a window up to 3 pm to paint. So at 6 this morning we raced down and based out 6 stories. Then it got all dark and we felt the little peblets of rain start coming so we raced the staging down and got everything inside real quick. Today was a great day though and we learned a lot. One, bring more to drink. Two, it is like climbing the alps and hard to breath up there with all the vent pumping out hot air. And three, it is true that looking down freaks you out a bit. LOL Anyways, we are hoping it does not rain tomorrow so we can keep moving but it doesn't look good at this point. I have to go now and eat and beat Ryan in a little game of poker! :)
Powerwashing.......
Third day here and I am ready to pull my hair out. LOL No just kidding. I am just anxious to start painting. The guys we hired to powerwash yesterday turned out to be a travesty so we sent them home and our new guys came today. They did a great job and we are ready to paint tomorrow. Unfortunately it is susposed to rain for the next couple of days. Cross our fingers for the weather forecast to be wrong. Anyways, other then that the super for the building seems to be the greatest super in NY and has already done so much for us. Love the guy and his great stories. Another great guy we met is Felix who got us our 2nd team of powerwashers, great help. The rest of the day we are at the apartment we rented with the girl who rented to us. Her name is Jamie and she is very funny. Check back tomorrow for some better news. P.S. IT IS SO HOT HERE I THINK I AM MELTING.....;0
We are now packing up and taking a rest. 5 days to go! Watch video below:
OK well we just finished a pretty intense week of in-house training and I am definately feel my age (or maybe it was the celebritory beers last night)! Either way we are ready to go and I am pumped to start this project. I feel like I can not sleep. I am gonna rap of some small details here before we start and then take the rest of the week off and hang with the family before I go. On the 15th we power wash the building and start priming and painting rhe mural on the 17th or 18th. Stay tuned for the start of the mural.
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Cutting our templates for the stones. Watch video below.
It is Sunday and today we are cutting our templates that we will actually use on the building. Yesterday we were using polystyrene until we found the shape we liked. Once happy we bought some brown board and attached metal handles to them. We have created multiple sets for each of us and they will be much more durable for the site.
Spraying with the new templates. Watch video below.
At the end of the day we shot rock paper scissors to see who would repaint the wall for the hundreth time! 5 MORE DAYS TILL WE START!!!
Watch video below.
Today we concentrated on technique and color testing. We really need our large blocks to be convincing and to get the viewer to forget about the bricks. I think we have done it at this point and I also think we have come up with the colors we are going to use. Now we have to work on the colors of the window arches and see what we come up with. All color needs to be decided today so we have time to order them. We did a 16 hour day yesterday so we are dragging a bit today but pushing thru it. Already we have surpassed all of our goals for the day and we are pretty much still ahead of the game. Hope you are enjoying this process and please stay tuned. 6 MORE DAYS until we start!
Watch video below:
Today we went to Brooklyn. Kristiano, Ryan and I took the train down pretty early this morning. Once there we met with our film guy who is filming seperately from these clips and will edit together hopefully a cool little documentary version for ourselves to keep. We went to the building and took measurements again (just in case) and just got one final look before we started. In less then a week the building will be powerwashed and then we paint. As for tonight we are still training till the wee hours in the studio. Tic Tok, we are getting closer!
Here we are on the train, early in the morning.
