In 2019 we created a Courtyard Mural for the Wakulla County Extension Office in Crawfordville Florida, in 2020, we created another mural for their Indoor Meeting Room. And now in 2023, we have created yet again another grand mural for their Arena.

Avery: Going into this project we had planned to keep it simple, yet in the end, it still turned out to be a massive undertaking. If you know anything about painting murals, you’ll know that it is hard work that requires incredible patience. Painting on a wall is much different than on a canvas, the proportional scale difference can be a difficult adjustment for an artist coming from a background of pen and paper. You will have to learn not to get caught up in the details of the mural and instead focus on the bigger picture, or else you may become distracted by the tiny details. You can’t be a perfectionist when it comes to a mural painting… Well you could, but I wouldn’t recommend it.

We had previously made two other murals for the Wakulla County Extension, the first being their Courtyard mural that took us almost two months for us to complete, that mural was about 50 foot wide, while we did not spend every day of those two months painting, it certainly took us longer than it should have, but to be fair on us, it was the first mural we had ever painted, so we were still learning how to plan and balance the work effort put into our murals. Our 2^nd mural for the extension, the indoor Meeting Room mural, took us two weeks to complete, that time we had a much better idea of how to plan the mural out, and it was a lot smaller too.

For our latest mural for the Extension, called the “Arena” mural, we wanted to complete it in under a week, as we ourselves were on a tighter deadline. The wall for this mural is about 21/2 foot wide and about 12 foot high. To make things more difficult, we also had one less person involved in the painting process this time, so the idea to finish this mural within a week seemed like a daunting task.

To make the painting process easier, many mural artists will make use of a projector to aid in the painting process. If an artist has a specific design that they were commissioned to create, a projector can aid in bringing that design into reality. Earlier this year we made use of a projector for two other mural projects, one being for the Wakulla County Elections Office, the other a personal commission of an American Eagle. Using a projector has been an incredible aid for us in making the mural painting process easier and stress free.

Now I must admit a deep dark secret, the design that was created for this mural was in fact made with the assistance of A.I (Gasp! The horror! Why would he do this?) Now I want to be honest, I do not appreciate how A.I has been exploited against artists, I understand why so many artists despise it. But at the end of the day, A.I is a tool that is here and available now, and I believe if you as an artist use it wisely, with care and caution, and as a tool to aid you in your work, I see no harm in using it. For me I wanted to create a design quickly, so I used A.I to create different images that I could then splice together, I still had to do some digital painting to make it work, the design certainly was not made with the click of a button. So I believe A.I used as an aid for designing and conceptualizing ideas is perfectly fine, especially when it saves you time. Ultimately, I knew the real art was going to be the painted wall, and not the design itself, which was simply a blueprint for this much bigger project.

We would spend several hours each day painting, even during the night, we wanted to complete the mural within a week and I’m proud to say we made it in 6 days. (Nov 7th-12th) This may have be a record for how fast we managed to paint a mural of this size. The mural is not perfect, but it is exactly what it needed to be and we are very satisfied with the final result. We also thank Mrs. Sherry Balchuck for the opportunity again to do this mural. As our third Mural for the Extension Office, and we are super proud that we have been able to bring so much beauty into their indoor and outdoor spaces. And we hope that, through art, we’ve created a stronger community.