Palomino, Colombia – 8 Murals

Where /Palomino, Colombia, a little town next to the Sierra Nevada’s and the Caribbean Sea. The hostel was just a month old when I arrived. The hostel was The Dreamer Hostel on the Beach.

They Dreamer had a restaurant, swimming pool, and bar. It was a relaxing couple of weeks. The downtown had about 300 people and there was a disco tech that was open every Saturday night. There was only a handful of hostels there and the town is definitely not a tourist place. This made for a nice escape from the tourist circuit and relaxation.

What: 8 Murals in the private door rooms, and one additional mural for advertisement for the hostel on the road. The murals were all themed murals of countries so the concept of eac h piece was predetermined. The different countries were Malaysia, Peru, Korea, South Africa, Panama, Costa Rica, Tanzania, Marruecos and New Zealand. I also painted the letters outside each private room as well.

Length of time: Three weeks painting about 5 hours a day.

Accomidation: I spent the three weeks in a 10 person dormitory room. It was quite the experiance as every day you had new péople to wake up to. I learned one of the most valuable thing on my travels: always, always, always have a charged i-pod ready for sleep as many people snore, sleep talk in the dorms and it will change your life.

What I learned: 8 murals is a lot of work to paint in one location. However it was a challenge that I was glad to have taken on. What made it difficult was that there were people that were sleeping in the rooms and so getting into the physical space was quite a challenge. Sometimes I had to tell the guests to wait and come back later so that I could finish painting. It became frustrating, especially when you have a flow going while painting and then guests stop the flow because they are paying for the room. Overall this experaince was super rewarding and waking up to the sound of the sea was stunning. I loved my time in Palomino and got to do some more commercial type work here. Definitely learned how to pick up the pace painting while maintaining quality work.