With practiced flicks of his wrist and wide sweeps of his arm, Alex Eickhoff began bringing the McClung Park mural to life.
As the sun rose Thursday, Eickhoff started preparing his canvas - a 5-by-12-foot rectangle of stucco on the side of the McClung Park pavilion. By midday, a background of green grass, blue sky and brown trees had taken shape, created by the strokes of Eickhoff's spray paint.
"My style is kind of impressionistic and loose," Eickhoff said, a paint respirator mask hanging around his neck and flecks of paint covering his clothes. "I'm not really scrutinizing every tiny detail."
Eickhoff's mural will feature a squirrel and chipmunk dancing among the trees under a moonlit sky.
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Jefferson City residents chose Eickhoff's design in a Facebook vote in December after the Jefferson City Cultural Arts Commission presented them with two final designs for the space, previously narrowed down from a handful of submissions.
"It's really inspired by the park itself," Eickhoff said. "I always try and incorporate some element of nature in my work, so I'm thinking of the local setting. When I think of this park, I always think of this canopy of trees that surrounds it. It kind of feels like you're in the forest even though you're this close to the city."
A Jefferson City native who now lives in Kansas City, Eickhoff was also inspired by the pavilion's common use as a dance hall.
"That's one of the things I remember about this building," Eickhoff said. "We used to have junior high dances and stuff like that here, or even family reunions or wedding receptions that I remember coming here and dancing and getting my boogie on. So I had to incorporate that."
He'll use spray paint for a majority of the mural, although some of the finer details he will do with a brush.
While he's been creating art and painting for years, Eickhoff only started creating public murals with spray paint in the last few years after he became involved with a festival in Kansas City called SpraySeeMO that highlights street murals.
Using spray paint over a brush has positives and negatives. There's less control with a spray can, but he is able to cover more space in a shorter time and is always able to match up the colors he uses if he needs to go back to a certain area.
Eickhoff's paints are also UV-resistant and not soluble in water, meaning they're protected from the elements. The Jefferson City Parks, Recreation and Forestry Department will also add a protective sealant to the mural once it's complete.
As he creates his design, Eickhoff works from back to front and from dark to light to build layers and give the painting a more realistic depth.
Eickhoff plans to complete the mural today or by Saturday.
"I think this is one of those projects that is helping Jeff City develop more of a cultural identity through the arts," Eickhoff said. "There's so many talented, creative minds here that are really pushing to make stuff like this happen."