Anatomy of a Mural

It began with a blank wall—fifty feet of white space waiting for a story. Inside the tasting room, the owner of TOCA Winery (Walt Whelen) dreamed of something more than decoration. He wanted the vineyard itself to live on that wall, to greet every guest with the feeling of stepping into a perfect spring day.

Every commission is a conversation; a shared vision shaped between artist and client. I began, as I always do, with a small sketch painting (renderings)—an intimate first glimpse of what the mural could become. We explored four different versions of the vineyard before the right one emerged, the one that captured the quiet beauty and promise he wanted guests to feel.

The chosen rendering

The rendering was scaled to a 1 inch = 1 foot grid, the blueprint for a mural that would soon stretch across the entire room. I built custom tools—a 10‑foot metal guide marked in one‑foot increments, fitted with a bubble level—to ensure every line on the wall was true. While the owner painted the backdrop in a soft blue‑grey sky tone, I developed a color palette from the rendering and had each hue precisely matched by the gallon.

With chalk, I laid out a perfect grid across the 50‑by‑20‑foot wall. Square by square, the vineyard began to appear—first as lines, then as color, then as life. I used colored chalk to map out tones, ensuring the transition from sketch to wall was seamless. A custom rolling workstation kept brushes & quarts of paints.

And slowly, the room changed.

My Nancy The mural grew into a sweeping landscape: blue sky, drifting clouds, tender spring growth stretching toward the sun. It carries with it the feeling of a perfect spring morning in the vineyard, now living permanently inside the tasting room.

What began as a blank wall became an experience. A moment of calm. A story in color. A place where visitors step inside and feel the vineyard embrace them.