Tool-Hack / Trompe L’Oeil Brick

12/4/2023

Here’s a cool Painting-Hack-Tool
and what I did with it!

I was out cleaning and re-organizing my Studio-On-Wheels the other day, and I came across this great tool I made for a trompe l’oeil project a few years back, buried under my yard-sticks, metal rulers and spirit levels, beneath my wooden planks, next to my light stands and tripods.

I needed to paint a four-story high facade of ‘bricks’ on the stucco surface of an elevator tower, to match the existing facade of a Gothic-style building.

So I cannibalized a plastic handle from somewhere and duct-taped it onto a long plastic spirit-level that had a ruler on it and “Voe-Wall-ahh!!” I had the perfect tool for the job! Light-weight, easy to handle, and easy to adjust on the wall, and versatile as wHell!!

So I took a load of pictures of the existing architecture…

…and re-created architectural elements for the newly finished (stuccoed) elevator tower on the new building.

In order to enhance the illusion of height of the tower I wanted to make the ‘bricks’ get smaller and smaller as they went higher and higher. But I didn’t want to take the time, nor was I enthusiastic about measuring-out all those brick-rows or snapping all those lines to keep them all parallel and straight!

Since I was working off of a awing-stage, secured from the top of the building, I needed to work my way down adjusting the height of each row of ‘bricks’ as I moved down the building and I needed each layer to be parallel with the last, as I made my way to the bottom of the tower.

I had already ‘pounced' the cartoon patterns I made in the studio...

…and I painted the architectural elements and the textured color-fields of the aged-facade.

All I had left to do was to paint the mortar between the ‘bricks’ and their shadows and high-lights, and the faded darks and lights of the old brick-pattern as I made my final pass down
the wall.

Here’s a link to a slideshow of the ‘Making-of’ the project.

2 Comments

Scott Maxwell

12/5/2023 11:01:16 pm

Roberto, that's *genius*!

Roberto A. Quintana

12/10/2023 09:59:24 pm

Thanx Scott!
That's a real compliment coming from a Certified Brainiac!
But please, not 'genius'. I am far too humble for that.
Perhaps 'Incredibly Creative' or 'Fantastically Artistic' or 'Intimidatingly Industrious'... but 'genius'! Well, now I'm blushing!! -RQ

...to Roberto's Blog!

‘Duit-On-Mon
-Dai-Luna-Prime’

  Roberto has been pestering the ‘Marketing’ staff here at Art and Soul for some time now to get together with ‘Research and Development’ to come up with a fun way for him to share all the great work out there of all the many other talented muralists and artists he's been "influenced by" over the years. ‘Sales’ was totally against the idea! ("How could that possibly improve the bottom-line?!"). ‘Marketing’ remains split, as usual ("We need more data"). ‘R&D’ thought it might be a fun way to "show off a little", and to showcase all those great ideas they keep finding out there on the internet. ‘HR’ said it might be a good way to keep 'The Crew' distracted ("Since they are all so bored since Covid hit, and Roberto is spending more and more time in his studio working on all those silly little easel paintings").
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-Roberto Quintana, WFA

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