Photo by Derik Holtmann

Last weekend a local Illinois newspaper, the Belleville News Democrat, ran a story about me and my mural work at the St. Louis Zoo.  Go to bnd.com and search "artist in a cage" if you want to check it out.  Photographer Derik Holtmann took some great pictures for the article.

Photo by Derik Holtmann, art by Patrick Weck

Photo by Derik Holtmann

Photo by Derik Holtmann

The zoo recently commissioned me to paint an exhibit for some lizards that live in North American deserts.  I am having a blast working on this mural and am probably 3/4ths of the way done.

 
The exhibit is for these awesome guys: the spiny-tailed iguana, the chuckwalla, the blue spiny lizard, and (my favorite) the gila monster.  The Banded Gila Monster is one of only two species of poisonous lizards in the entire world!  I feel like I'm painting the home of a celebrity.

When I started there was already an 18 year old mural here.  The old mural was a rocky desert scene, but the colors were very dull and the type of mountains were not really appropriate to the environments in places like Arizona where these guys are usually found.

First I painted the newly plastered area by the skylight to look like a blue sky.  I hid a lizard or two in the clouds.

The scaffolding was taken away and I painted over the rest of the old mural's sky.  Here's Paul putting in some new lights.

Next, I began painting over the old mountains.

I am basing the new mountains on pictures of the Superstition Mountain range in Arizona.

I finished repairing and expanding the reticulated python exhibit on June 13th.  They've moved her back in and I think she likes it.

Most of the work I did is in the upper area of the exhibit that leads to the skylight, though I also added some plants to the original, repaired places where the paint had flaked away, and painted the rocks to look more natural.