Just got me wondering, some of those jobs are huge. What's the biggest wall job you've heard of....or done.....and how were some of those amazingly huge pictorials done to such perfection?
Posted by Tim Barrow (Member # 576) on :
Don't know how big the wall was here I wrote it down many moons ago,..but I remember painting the word "Winston" on the grandstand at North Wilkesboro Speedway back in the late seventies and the letters were way over fifteen foot tall and it took over 6 20' swings with the stage to complete the job,..after I was done the Winston ad people flew over in Junior Johnson's plane to see if they could read it,..I spent the next fifteen years painting Winston Cup Series on just about anything you can imagine at racetracks across the eastern coastal and southeastern United States at racetracks for them,...another wall I did was over 7 stories tall and way over 150 feet wide for a pawn shop here in town,...they had a contractor paint the background so I never actually measured the whole wall, but the copy was way over ten feet tall for three words,...Camel City Pawn,...Have done some quite large signs in my time but those two come to mind,....as for the pictorials I use a system of 4' grids bisected from corner to corner when I lay them out,...in other words I start with a scaled drawing with scaled four foot squares and then x them out from corner to corner as I lay them out,...this serves two purposes,..one it helps me keep track of where I am working at a glance on a very large layout and the other is that your mind can interpret the spacial relationships in a triangle three times as fast as in a square,...the system being that when I x out a four foot square on the layout I end up with four exact triangles to draw from and the layout goes much faster,...this system works on any grid system form a 6" to a ten foot grid quite well and helps you keep track of where you are at with a glance to see the last square x'd out,...as for perfection,..you are on your own there,..some of the best pictorals looked horribly sloppy up close and like photographs from the ground five or six stories below,...look at a photo with a magnifier and crop out all but one tiny square and you might get an idea of what I'm taking about,...
edited to add I just remembered doing a wall three stories high by about three hundred foot long here on a corrugated grandstand here about twenty or more years ago,..
[ August 21, 2010, 05:06 PM: Message edited by: Tim Barrow ]
Posted by David Kynaston (Member # 4395) on :
Tim that's amazing. If you have any pics to see that would be a real bonus. I love the X idea. How big was Camel City Pawn to justify such a job?
Thanks for sharing.
Posted by Tim Barrow (Member # 576) on :
I'll have to search my photos it was done about five or six years back and I am quite bad at taking pics of my work but the job is in a nearby town and I have to go there this week,...will try to get a photo then and post it,...
Posted by David Kynaston (Member # 4395) on :
I think you're going to have to now Tim........everyones waiting..........lets hope it hasn't been painted over...........or even worse............vinyl wrapped.....aaaaaaarrrrrrggggghhhh !!!!!!
Posted by Tim Barrow (Member # 576) on :
not too worried about that,..made damned sure the guy paid enough to appreciate my work for quite awhile,...
Posted by Sonny Franks (Member # 588) on :
I can't top Timi (nor would I want to) but here's the biggest I've done so far and it was 30 years ago:
This was on the side of a 3 story bank and the turn-of-the-century row houses are in 3/4 scale. That's me sitting on a park bench in the center and Peggy is in the balcony window of the pink house. It's 160 feet wide and we painted it in the dead of winter. The bank had a flashing time/temp sign and I remember sitting up there on the very top of the scaffold one morning and seeing 17 degrees (that's fahrenheit for you farners)flashing across and wondering why in the hell I ever got in this business.
I'm still wondering..........
[ August 21, 2010, 10:57 PM: Message edited by: Sonny Franks ]
Posted by Dan Sawatzky (Member # 88) on :
The biggest mural I've done so far was 50' tall and 100 feet wide. It was done on an old, rough brick wall in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. took 9 days as I recall. The building was torn down last year.
The largest lettering I've done was 20 feet high and 270 feet long. 'Baker Cold Storage' The bottom of the lettering/graphic was twenty feet off the ground. It had a big three color stripe and graphic of Mount Baker as well. It was done around 1979 and lasted for decades. That was the only time in my life I used a swing stage. I remember I bid the job very low ($1,250 as I recall) and ended up covering the cost of the paint and stage rental and little else. The owner asked me after it was done if I had made any money on the project. I sheepishly replied no. He handed me my check for the exact amount I had quoted and told me he was very happy with my work. He also told me to do my homework better the next time and charge what the job was worth. Another warehouse building was eventually built beside the wall covering it up.
-grampa dan
[ August 21, 2010, 06:32 PM: Message edited by: Dan Sawatzky ]
Posted by William DeBekker (Member # 3848) on :
This was my first and only time I ever Painted a wall until Danville. This was done about 9 years ago.. This was a First for me on many issues.. First time on a swing Stage, Something this large and using the grid concept for painting. To give you an Idea of size.. Those openings are 20ft high.
I took these photos today as they called this week and want me to refresh the bottom two panel signs.. At least I will get to paint these in the shop and just have install them off a 200 ft crane.
Posted by Bill Wood (Member # 6543) on :
Tim,I'm thinking back,did you paint the 15 ft JFG COFFEE letters in Charlotte when you and I painted for 3M and also the 14 ft pictorals of Dolly Parton & Kenny Rogers for Nagle Outdoor Adv.
Posted by Tim Barrow (Member # 576) on :
just like you did Bill,...there were 897 damned light bulbs in that JFG sign and ya had to remove each one before ya could paint it,...to give you an idea of the scale those letters are about 16' tall each,...
here is the sister sign just like it in Knoxville Tenn. without the lights on,I remember seeing it at night it had chaser switches (the bulbs would light from top to bottom)and the neon turned on and off it was a spectacular site to see if ya didn't have to paint tha thing,...
edited to add,...while the one in Tennesse isn't quite as high off the ground as the one in charlotte was,they both are covered in kudzu,go figure,...bet they both had wasp nests up under the cross piece in the "G" also,....
[ August 22, 2010, 12:09 AM: Message edited by: Tim Barrow ]
Posted by FranCisco Vargas (Member # 145) on :
David, hows your dad (Mr. Cool Dude) doing? been a long time, well amigo here's one I just completed a couple months ago. It's 23' X 122' Half trowel twirled finished textured wall.
It's the Long Beach, CA arena and was painted by locals for the Guinness record - the sides are also painted in a dolphin motif similar to Wyland's style.......
[ August 22, 2010, 12:53 PM: Message edited by: Sonny Franks ]
Posted by Ed Gregorowicz (Member # 1842) on :
Our biggest was a 10' x 140 double sided sign that ran the length of the roof of a truck garage / warehouse for a local truck stop. Re-painted the entire background and then lettered new logos on both sides.... I think we got $3500 for the whole deal... back in 1988....
It was the middle of June when we did it, and it was just crazy hot on that roof, so after the second day, we started working on it at night, from say 6 pm until 2 or 3 in the morning. The whole thing was illuminated with halogen spotlights, so it was almost like working in the day light.
[ August 22, 2010, 05:56 PM: Message edited by: Ed Gregorowicz ]
