Space Probe Mural at The Yard
I was drawing little trucks at a coffee shop in 2022 and a gentleman asked me if I'd ever put my art up as graffiti. Fast-forward to early 2023 and I found myself up on a gigantic corrugated wall putting one of my space probes up as a mural. The experience was a wild one, with some pretty sizeable hurdles and a LOT of learning required, but it ended up coming out even better than expected! You can see the piece in real life at The Yard on St. Elmo in Austin, Texas, on the backside of the building containing Alvies and MADabolic!
The completed piece, put up over the course of a couple of months.
The original wall. Pretty big change, eh?
The first step was projecting the design onto the wall at night and outlining it in paint.
Scaffolding was the way to go on the constantly-varying terrain of the site. Here I am in my cool-weather painting garb envisioning the final piece.
A close-up of the thruster cluster, fuel pods, and reactors.
Logo stencils: fun! Working around utility lines: not quite as fun!
Close-up of the communications array.
The right side of the mural, featuring exotic planets.
The spacey nebulas of the left side of the piece.
Some more worlds on the left side too.
Me, proud of my work!
I needed to create some tools for this challenging piece, including this variable-line-width stencil, made out of 3D-printed brackets and paint stirrers.
Custom planets require huge circular stencils!
Here's a big pile of all of the stencils I created for the mural.
Spray cans and magnets were key parts to a lot of the mural work.
A shot of all of the paint I used for the piece.
The Graco project sprayer was the perfect tool for the nebulas and flat color work.
The artist at work!
