The owners of Jake’s Saloon commissioned Artist Jeremy Penn and yours truly to create an old-tyme Manhattan scene on the 11X26 foot exterior brick wall at their 875 10th Avenue location, at the North West corner of West 57th and 10th Avenue. We relished the opportunity to make our mark on the Manhattan landscape.
Here is what Jake’s Saloon looked like before the exterior facelift, image courtesy of Google Maps.
This is the after shot.
Here is where it all began… with a quick Photoshop comp (you can click on the image above for a larger view).
A blank Slate. Jeremy gets to work building a grid, one 1’X1′ square at at time.
Grid complete, we begin working from lower left, to right.
Jeremy in his finest Teamster pose, stands at the base of the unfinished scaffolding. I’ll admit, putting together a scaffold is real mans work, and it made me feel more manly.
Black and white, pure high contrast. See my camera up there? It wasn’t destined to be around for long.
A view from across the street… starting to take shape. It’s critical when painting something on this scale that you frequently see how it looks and feels from a distance.
Jeremy working off the ground. As you can see, we were able to work collaboratively on, quite literally, every section of the mural.
Drawing in the Jake’s logo…
Now it’s painted!
Nailing in the fading skyline to the left of the logo… right about now is when the camera was stolen.
Starting to shape up from afar.
One unexpected challenge was painting over the elevated concrete archway… it creates a strange perspective point.
You have to stagger the lines so the shapes read coherently.
Starting to get into shape.
Now for some sweet pictures courtesy of Luis Pons, who came to snap-up part of the process. Jeremy and me cranking away.
Great picture of the Jake’s sign. Take a look at this great recap from The Art of Design, courtesy of Matt Drummond.
Mr. Penn, getting the Sharpie to work for him.
Working high and low.
Despite it being “Business Casual Friday”, I decided to dress up anyway.
A close-up of Penn.
Get that paint poured out challs.
Free flowing lines.
The source.
The Jake’s logo with a faded me to the right.
Classic Penn.
“Sorry, I am covered in paint, otherwise I would sign an autograph for you.”
As an artist, it’s important to constantly work on your calves…
Focused…
Add black and those are the only tones we used for this puppy.
Added benefit of having a gut? It’s the easiest way to clean your brushes.
Really starting to come together.
We had to take the scaffolding down because of Irene… which gave us our first unadulterated view of the progress…
Fortunately, the mural survived the storm… and eventual earthquake. The locusts never arrived.
The top left is finally painted in! We had to use a ladder and a cinder block to get up that high, which made for some tense moments.
Scaffold back up, time to push toward the finish.
Some final touches on the carriages and…
Fin!
A step back to look at the completed job.
A mural by Borbay & Penn… this was by all accounts a seamless collaboration from start to finish.
With the overhang lights added, Jake’s facelift is now complete.
I would like to sincerely thank Jimmy Cahill and Jimmy Glynn for this terrific opportunity. Another big shout to the entire Jake’s team for treating us like family throughout the entire process. Please stand by for the Mural Opening Party, which will be scheduled soon. Be sure to check out Jake’s, not only at this location, but their other two locations at 23rd and 7th Avenue; and 9th Avenue between 22nd and 23rd.
you’re looking pretty rough in these photos jason, and penn is looking all movie star like. i think he might be using you to make himself look better for the ladies. just kidding.
killer job guys, looks fantastic.
Mark, funny you should mention that. We had an agreement prior to kicking off the mural — I promised to dress as dodgy as possible… this included not shaving, wearing the same crappy cargo shorts every day, and carrying myself about in a generally unkempt fashion. Thank you for the shout!