The Winchester Lodge | Custom Art Feature

The Client: 

The Winchester Lodge is a rustic-chic 16 suite hotel set on 2 secluded acres located a block off Fredericksburg’s Historic Main Street shopping district. 

The Project:

The Winchester Lodge hospitality team had been brainstorming ideas to promote their cozy hotel on social media when they contacted me with an idea for an “Instagram-able” mural they had space for on their covered patio. This connection was orchestrated through a previous mural project I had the opportunity to create at the Stonewall Motor Lodge in Stonewall, Texas. 

Their request was to create a colorful mural that represented everything that was “quintessentially Fredericksburg, Texas” with  imagery that would transition through the four seasons of the Texas Hill Country.

The Process: 

Equipped with reference photos of Enchanted Rock, bluebonnet fields, and the city’s famous 26-foot tall German Christmas tree, we created an initial sketch that brought our seasonal Texas mural into reality. 

With excited approval of the drawing from the Winchester Lodge team, they graciously booked a suite for me at their hotel and I spent four enjoyable days prepping the wall and painting their new mural.

The first step was to sand down all three rough walls and prime them with my favorite mildew-resistant white paint and primer from Behr. A smooth white backdrop would allow for crisp painted lines and true, bold colors. 

Normally, I would have traced my design onto the wall using a projector at night to enlarge my sketch. With the organic nature of this design, I was able to freehand the entire drawing with pencil onto the primed wall. The only time I used my projector for this mural was for the Winchester Lodge logo, which was hand painted over the top of the sunset sky at the very end.

The Final:

 The final mural was created using Behr exterior enamel paints, and a combination of Wooster and Mack Tidwell brushes of all different sizes. 

I added vibrant color to each of the impressionistic shapes with the goal to make the overall painting look like a vintage paint by number. 

The most challenging portion of this mural was the “Winter scene” with the stars and Christmas lights. For the big and bright Texas stars, I watered down some white paint and bent the bristles of my brush back using my thumb to splatter the color over the blue backdrop. Using the handle of my brush dipped in color, I was able to mimic the look of Holiday string lights wrapped around the trunks of all the silhouetted trees.

Artist Comments // Experience:

The final outcome of the mural is a colorful and striking representation of the Texas Hill Country. The artwork took an otherwise forgotten location and transformed it into a branded landing place for guests to sip a glass of wine by the pool and snap a selfie. In fact, as I was in the process of finishing the mural, people had already started to take photos with it! This gave me confidence  knowing that what we had just created had already started to serve its intended purpose as a memorable backdrop for photos taken with happy guests. 

 Be sure to follow The Winchester Lodge on Instagram and Facebook to tag your selfie pictures with the mural, or book your future stay!

The Winchester Lodge Mural Gallery

I want to sincerely thank the owner and team at the Winchester Lodge, not only for the opportunity to create this beautiful mural, but for the immense hospitality during my stay. The room was tranquil and clean and I thoroughly enjoyed the cute picnic basket breakfast every morning. I look forward to our future collaborations.

The Tools I Used to Make This Art (Please note, some of these products are affiliate links) :  

Purchase a Mahl Stick Here

Purchase Transfer Paper Here 

Purchase Mack Co. Tidwell Brushes Here

Exterior Stain Enamel Paints by Behr