The Jungle Java Mural

I decided to put some of the murals in my portfolio online this is one of my favorites. The woman that I did the mural for owns a modeling school. Her daughters have won several pageants and are only in elementary and maybe middle school. One of the girls wanted the play room to be painted like a coffee shop and the other wanted it to be painted like a jungle. I decided to come up with a sketch that would incorporate both ideas the result was Jungle Java. The lemur runs the coffee shop and the other animals in the mural are patrons. I had so much fun doing this mural. I don't know if you will be able to see the coffee cups that well but the girls each put their name on the cups. I think that added just a little extra touch that really meant something to the mother. I have a few people that I have created artwork for that let me have full run of the design and this was one of them. She loved the idea behind the mural but didn't want it to overpower the room. I think that it worked out very well. Let me know what you guys think.
Steven Defnall
Murals Portraits Commissioned Paintings

A few of my pieces

These pieces have all been done in the past few years. Some have been commissioned some I chose because I wanted to see if I could accomplish what I envisioned when I started them and others were just for the love of putting a brush to canvas. The picture of the pelican is actually a friend of mine named fernando he is a brown pelican I met while vacationing in Ft. Walton , FL. He had been caught in a plastic bag the wild life authorities had freed him but he was injured and could not fly great distances so in exchange for his companionship I fed him the smaller fish that I caught off the dock where I was staying at the Leeside motel. I have seen him since then but our visits are few and far between. The Little girl is the daughter of a friend her name is Destiny. I came across a photograph of her when she was three she is a four years older now but I wanted to capture her with the expression she had in the picture. The other painting is a commission and at the clients request painted in black and white this one was a challenge because most of the people and animals had passed away when I undertook this project.