Sam Flax Grand Opening

Sam Flax moved into a new building just a few blocks east of the old store on Colonial Drive. The building was painted to look like the paintings of Piet Mondrian. The bright red, blue and yellow painted building looks like it is built from Legos. Andrew Spear and business partner Chuck Marklin executed the colorful conversion. To help commemorate the opening day, three mural artists were asked to paint murals on the side of the building in three panels that faced the parking lot. . Since I have to paint a mural myself now, I decided to go to the opening and talk to the artists.

There seems to be less parking available at the new store. I drove around the block to finally locate a spot right on Colonial Drive in front of a martial arts facility. Swamburger was working on a bold panel with a distorted circular fish eye view point. His under drawing was done with bold green brushwork. The face resembled an African mask. Andrew Spear was working on a crosshatched vision of an elephant. I was fortunate that Andrew introduced himself while I was still working on my sketch. I asked him what he used to do the bold line work on his murals. He handed me a Krink marker and explained that he had to order them online since few people carried them locally. I found it ironic that Sam Flax doesn’t carry them. Mother Falcon sometimes has them.

I went to Mother Falcon the next day to locate the markers. They had a much thicker marker than the one Andrew showed me but I bought it to try out. I inked in the largest figures on the Mennello Museum mural using that fat marker. I decided to order the thinner marker online and I used that for the next few figures. I am continuing to experiment and play with the ways that work best for me.

The Yum Yum Cupcake truck was there offering free cupcakes to anyone who bought art supplies in the store. A vendor saw me sketching and he offered me several General’s sketch and wash pencils along with an art training DVD and several erasers. Score! Maisy and Ron Mars said hello. She was shooting photos of one of her shirts discarded on the ground. This was supposed to be the end of the world and she wanted to leave photographic proof that she had ascended to heaven. The end of the world never came and the next day I had to face my 50th birthday.