Because we can't always be in Negril!!!

We decided to bring part of Negril to us. We commissioned a mural on our wall in our basement that we are currently finishing. Here are some pics along the way. This is a way to keep us in the Negril Spirit when travel to Negril cannot occur. Hope you enjoy the shots (sorry Rob, not totally Negril travel related, but I thought folks here would get a kick out of it).

These pictures were taken at intervals along with way so you can see how the painting progressed.

Very beginning

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Drawing in the band

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Bob's Head!!!

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All Three Heads

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Yes, that is Cortis, the fruit lady

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Really coming together now

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Our beach chairs and feet appear

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Almost Complete

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Nearly 100% done

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I'll post some more detailed shots of the finished mural along with another part of our basement project later.

This is beautiful

I love it!! Very nice!! :cool:

Now that is way cool:o

That is awesome (except I'd only leave the basement to go to Negril) :)

Very nice !

SWEET!!!~In your spare time you want to fly down here in south texas and i got a wall that needs some attention like the masterpiece that you just completed :))~Shear beauty!!!!~AWESOME WORK!!!~Watch out Karl Ricketts:)))

THAT IS AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :D

What talented artists!!!

Wow! It looks great!

What a boss ass painting!!!!!!!

That's amazing, now you can always be in Negril !

I did the next best thing, I got a tattoo of the beach, sand, sun and palm trees to always remind me where I should always be......

Very Cool!

Sweet!

Awesome picture,cracked me up when your feet appeared:)

I also got a beach tattoo......my happy place!!

If you mind..can I ask how many man hours went into it? Ever think of getting a few potted palm trees in the room? Very nice painting...

red stripe will forever be $150J

Love it!

Awesome!

I hope I don't have to do that for some years to come! I'll just keep walking across the street to see it! Neat! --Fr. Jim

Very cool!!! And what a great idea!
Hmmmmmm, *starts looking around the room at the plain white walls* ;)

nice job! going to do the same but in the garage

That is totally awesome,we have built a white sand beach with a purple picnic table and have the Jamaican flag flying high over it but this would be awesome on our spare room wall,then we would be surrounded with our second home!!Attachment 28896

We could put you up in our little Jamaica resort for a little mural work ;>}

i'll bring a truck load of redsripe..

Done deal!!

I love it!!

Love it:)

That's super cool

Don't misunderstand me, we commissioned this piece, I have no talent when it comes to art, my only talent in this endeavor was describing what I (we) wanted and writing the check for it. The artist worked off and on for about the last 6 weeks on it, but certainly he did not work every day and didn't usually work on it more than 5 hours per day.

I'm posting a few more pictures of some of the details of the painting up close. I am also including a 2nd project that we undertook in our basement. Again, I just supplied the pictures for the 2nd project and we found someone to make it come true. First the details of the painting:

Our feet on our beach chairs:
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Up-close of Melo's Jamaican toes:
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A crab:
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A little lizard on our beach table:
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A fishing boat floats by:
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A sort-of side view:
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This is a picture of another item we wanted. It is a sun mosaic from the floor at Rick's Café. We have taken pictures of this for years and we always said we wanted this in the floor of our bar in our basement if we ever had the time to finish it, well we finally have the time.
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And check our what we got back from the company that made this for us. Almost exactly perfect. The tape on top will be removed after it is installed and after it is I will post an updated picture, but I am so excited about it, I wanted to go ahead and show it to you now:
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We have a few other "Jamaica" oriented details that we are going to do but those are probably a little while off. I will send more updates once those are done too.

Thanks for all the great comments so far, we only get about 2 weeks per year in Jamaica, so the other 50 weeks we will have our "little Jamaica" in our basement!!

Wow - you guys have it bad! Looks great though :)