Chinatown Mixed Media Art

A custom Chinatown mixed media art canvas commission for a private collector in New York City. This piece was based on the Greetings from Chinatown mural painted in NYC. We are often asked about custom paintings of our postcard style artwork on canvas.  However, due to the intricate details and use of spray paint, it’s difficult to translate our artwork to a small scale. While it’s possible, the cost would probably be as much as a large scale mural. Therefore, we were really excited to experiment with a mixed media approach combining Lisa’s photography with Victor’s hand painted embellishments!

We worked with a local printer to custom print a digitally altered photograph of the Greetings from Chinatown mural onto a heavy weight canvas. This print was about 7 ft wide by 3.5 ft tall.  We also included some additional few inches of bleed so that the image could be wrapped. In addition, we first tested this process on a smaller scale artist proof before moving forward with the large scale print. There’s some limits to how big we can go before the image starts to look pixelated.

Once we received the large photo print on canvas, Victor masked off the letters to add some texture around the letters with spray paint.  The client loved the gritty environment with the NYC graffiti.  As a result, we decided to incorporate more abstract graffiti elements (a nod to Victor’s roots)

Afterwards, we used the same color of pink spray paint that we used on the actual mural to create a glow around the piece. This brought in another dimension of a vivid color that’s not possible with printed inks. The black and red 3D was also outlined and filled in with acrylic paint. We were very pleased with the results of this piece and look forward to painting similar hand embellished mixed media pieces in the future!

Year: 2022

Size: 42” H x 84” W

Medium: Spray paint, ink & acrylics on canvas