Precita Eyes: The Colors Behind Our Art

12 min read

More than 30 years of murals, community, and artistic friendship in San Francisco Bay Area.

By Peter Bogdanov | Bogdanov Studio

Along the Pacifica coastline, four enormous Great White Sharks have been swimming across the exterior walls of Oceana High School for nearly twelve years. They have endured the afternoon sun, coastal fog, salt air, winter storms, and everything else the Pacific Ocean can throw at a building facing west toward the sunset.

And they're still looking beautiful.

That is something I take enormous pride in. As a professional muralist, I've spent decades learning not only how to create artwork on a monumental scale, but how to make that artwork endure.

The secret isn't really a secret at all. It begins with experience, proper preparation, professional craftsmanship, and choosing quality materials. For more than thirty years, one San Francisco organization has been part of that equation for me: Precita Eyes Muralists.

From my earliest paintings in a family home on Potrero Hill in 1994 to our newest monumental Giant Pacific Octopus mural in Pacifica, Precita Eyes has been our trusted source for professional mural colors, specialty pigments, and protective finishes. But my relationship with Precita Eyes is about considerably more than buying paint.

It's about artists supporting artists. It's about a city with an extraordinary history of public art. And it's about the satisfaction of knowing that some of the materials we use to beautify our communities come from an organization that has spent nearly fifty years doing exactly the same thing.

A Special Place in San Francisco's Mural History

San Francisco has always been a city where art spills out of galleries and onto the streets.

Walk through the Mission District and you'll find entire buildings transformed into paintings. Walls tell stories of families, neighborhoods, cultural identity, politics, history, and the human experience.

For generations, muralists have helped give San Francisco its extraordinary visual character.

And since 1977, Precita Eyes Muralists Association has been an important part of that artistic tradition.

Founded by Susan and Luis Cervantes and fellow artists in the Mission District, Precita Eyes grew from a commitment to making art accessible to the communities in which it lives.

Their organization has helped create and preserve hundreds of murals while providing arts education, youth programs, community collaborations, and opportunities for generations of emerging artists.

I have tremendous respect for that kind of dedication.

It's one thing to make beautiful art. It's another thing entirely to spend a lifetime helping other people make beautiful art.

The organization has also maintained a professional mural supply operation for decades, providing artists with specialty paints and materials that aren't always readily available through conventional commercial paint suppliers.

Their store on 24th Street is a wonderful reminder of what happens when an art institution remains connected to the practical needs of working artists.

You can find brilliant colors, unusual pigments, professional mediums, protective finishes, and people who actually understand mural painting.

And perhaps most importantly, when you support Precita Eyes, you're supporting an organization that actively contributes to the artistic character of San Francisco. For an artist who has spent so much of his life making paintings on walls, that's a relationship worth celebrating.

Where It Began: Potrero Hill, 1994

My own history with mural painting began in San Francisco, long before many of the monumental projects we're known for today.

In 1994, I painted my first two murals inside our family residence on Potrero Hill.

One was a winged gargoyle, a dramatic, imaginative creature that reflected my interest in fantasy, classical imagery, and expressive figurative painting.

The other was much more personal.

It was called Donna's Birds, a painting inspired by my wife, Donna, during her pregnancy with our son.

Looking back on those two works more than thirty years later, I can see how much of my artistic character was already present.

One painting was about imagination, mythology, and dramatic imagery. The other was about family, love, and an important moment in our lives.

Both became part of the environment in which we lived.

Those early murals helped establish something that has remained central to my artistic philosophy: a painting doesn't have to live inside a frame. A wall can become a canvas. A room can become a painting. Architecture itself can become part of the artwork.

Precita Eyes was part of that early chapter, and the relationship has continued through decades of artistic experimentation, professional development, and increasingly ambitious projects.

From the Mission District to the Pacifica Coast

As our studio evolved, so did the scale of our paintings.

Much of our public mural work eventually became concentrated in Pacifica, where schools, businesses, community facilities, and private residents gave us opportunities to bring original artwork into everyday surroundings.

These projects vary enormously in subject and scale, but they share a common foundation: original artistic concepts, professional materials, and the belief that thoughtfully created artwork can transform a space.

Four Great White Sharks at Oceana High School

Our Oceana High School Great White Sharks mural remains one of my favorite examples of art becoming part of a community's identity.

The mural features four enormous Great White Sharks, powerful animals that are deeply connected to the ecology and imagination of the Northern California coast. Their forms move across the wall with the sense of energy and presence that only large-scale painting can achieve.

We created the artwork using Precita Eyes mural paints, including specialty pearlescent additives that introduced subtle reflective qualities into the finished painting.

These effects are especially beautiful outdoors, where the natural light changes throughout the day.

But one of the most gratifying aspects of the Oceana mural is its longevity.

The wall faces west toward the Pacific Ocean, receiving direct afternoon sunlight and years of exposure to coastal weather.

We finished the mural with Sheercoat, a protective coating supplied by Precita Eyes that helps defend outdoor artwork against ultraviolet exposure, environmental contaminants, and graffiti.

Drawing upon our extensive background in both mural painting and professional painting contracting, we developed an efficient spray-application approach for the protective finish that also addressed the challenges of the wall's textured, poured-concrete surface.

The results have been excellent.

Nearly twelve years later, the painting and protective finish have held up beautifully.

For me, that kind of real-world performance is worth more than a dozen advertising claims.

It represents years of proof, exposed to one of the most demanding coastal environments in California.

Five Tigers at Terra Nova High School

Across Pacifica, our work at Terra Nova High School celebrates another extraordinary animal.

For the school's wrestling room, we created a mural featuring five powerful tiger heads: three white tigers and two Bengal tigers. The imagery was designed around the strength, determination, and intensity associated with the school's athletic identity.

The contrast between the white tigers and the richly colored Bengal tigers provided wonderful opportunities to explore texture, shadow, and dramatic color relationships.

We wanted athletes entering the room to feel surrounded by imagery that reflected the competitive spirit of their sport.

Again, Precita Eyes colors provided the artistic foundation. The mural also received the protective finishing treatment we developed for our major school installations.

Tigers at Sunset: Terra Nova's Swimming Pool

The swimming pool at Terra Nova High School presented an entirely different environment.

Here, we combined the school's tiger identity with a beautifully colored sunset, creating a mural that interacts with the open atmosphere of the pool.

The relationship between the tiger imagery, the warm sunset colors, and the surrounding water gives this painting a character very different from the more aggressive wrestling-room mural.

It's an example of something I've always loved about large-scale art: the same subject can become an entirely different experience depending on its surroundings. These two projects also demonstrate the versatility of Precita Eyes mural colors. From the subtle whites and shadows of the wrestling-room tigers to the rich atmosphere of a swimming-pool sunset, the paints allowed us to work across very different palettes and artistic environments.

Making Room for the Next Generation

Another Terra Nova project involved a series of painted panels installed at the front of the school.

Two of the paintings were created by our studio using Precita Eyes colors, while additional panels were completed by Terra Nova High School students. I particularly appreciate this kind of project because it connects professional artistic work with the creativity of young people. And that brings us right back to the spirit of Precita Eyes.

For nearly fifty years, their organization has emphasized community participation and arts education, encouraging people of all ages to take part in the creation of public art.

We share that belief.

As artists, we have an opportunity not only to leave behind our own work, but to encourage another generation to create something of its own.

Art for Businesses, Homes, and Everyday Life

Not every mural needs to cover a school gymnasium or an entire municipal building.

Some of our favorite projects are the smaller paintings that become part of a neighborhood's daily life.

Table Wine: A Local Pacifica Business

For Table Wine, a neighborhood wine business in Pacifica, we created a custom graphic painting project designed to complement the business's identity.

Unlike a conventional pictorial mural, this project drew upon our background in graphic design, branding, lettering, and professional painting. I enjoy these assignments because they allow us to bring the same care and originality found in large public murals to a local storefront. A business doesn't always need another prefabricated sign. Sometimes it needs an artist.

Tulips on a Pacifica Home

For a private residence in Pacifica, we painted an arrangement of tulips above a garage door and along the side of the house.

This was a much quieter, more personal project.

Instead of great white sharks or fierce tigers, we worked with the beauty of flowers, adding something cheerful and artistic to an everyday residential setting.

I believe projects like this are just as important to a community's visual environment as larger public works.

They transform the familiar into something personal.

The same professional Precita Eyes colors we use on giant exterior murals can serve a simple floral painting on someone's home.

It's one of the pleasures of working with such versatile materials.

The Truth: A Tiger with Red Tears

One of our more provocative earlier paintings appeared on the exterior of The Truth, our Pacifica tattoo studio, which operated between 2012 and 2016.

The painting featured a tiger, but with one very unusual detail.

I painted the tiger with red tears.

The tears were symbolic. They represented the destruction of the natural world and the threat of extinction facing these magnificent animals as human populations expand into wildlife habitats.

It was intended to make people think.

The painting was striking, somewhat controversial, and unapologetically expressive.

That's something I believe public art should be allowed to do.

Not every mural needs to be cheerful or decorative. Sometimes a painting should communicate an idea, create a conversation, or express concern about the world we share.

The tiger mural at The Truth remains one of those works for me.

Terra Nova Fitness: Creating an Entire Environment

At Terra Nova Fitness, our work extended beyond a traditional mural into interior design, branding, and environmental painting. We created atmospheric skies, a moon, mountain imagery, lettering, and a coordinated interior color scheme.

The goal was to give the business an integrated visual identity rather than simply place individual paintings on the walls. This is another area where our experience as painters, designers, and contractors comes together.

We understand that paint is both an artistic medium and an architectural finish.

We consider how color responds to light, how it relates to neighboring surfaces, and how the entire space feels to the people using it.

Precita Eyes paints have given us the flexibility to move between fine-art imagery, commercial graphics, and environmental design without losing the richness of our colors.

Beneath Pacifica: An Octopus Painted in Extraordinary Color

Our most recent monumental project brings us back to the Pacific Ocean.

In 2026, we transformed the City of Pacifica's aging wastewater Pump House into an enormous underwater scene dominated by a Giant Pacific Octopus.

The mural, titled Beneath Pacifica, stretches approximately 100 feet along the building and encompasses roughly 1,500 square feet of architectural surface.

It was created by myself and my son, Isaiah Bogdanov, with assistance from developing artist Karter Snyder.

The octopus reaches across doors, vents, stucco, metal, and other industrial features of the building, making the architecture itself part of the painting.

It is one of the most ambitious murals our family has created.

And color is absolutely central to its success.

For this project, we selected a particularly beautiful group of paints from Precita Eyes, including Navajo Turquoise, Hawaiian Aqua, Baby Blue, Caribe, and Naphthol Crimson, along with additional reds, specialty pigments, and finishing mediums.

The relationship between those colors was carefully planned.

We wanted the Giant Pacific Octopus to emerge powerfully from an environment of deep turquoise, blue-green water, and near-black shadows. Navajo Turquoise and Hawaiian Aqua provided the rich aquatic character we were seeking. Baby Blue helped us develop lighter atmospheric passages and transitions, while Caribe contributed to the complexity of the blue-green environment.

Against these cooler colors, we built the octopus through layers of red. Naphthol Crimson and our additional red mixtures provided the foundation for the animal's skin, with deeper values building dimension and carefully placed brighter reds and blood-orange highlights bringing selected forms forward.

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The result relies on a fundamental principle of painting: complementary color relationships.

The warm reds and oranges of the octopus become dramatically more vibrant when surrounded by cool turquoise and blue-green fields.

We further developed the painting with pearlescent and opalescent pigments, creating subtle effects that change as the sunlight and viewing angle shift.

These aren't simply decorative tricks.

They're part of the language of painting, allowing a flat surface to suggest depth, movement, and living form.

For an artwork of this scale, those material choices make an enormous difference.

There is also something deeply satisfying about buying these beautiful colors from a San Francisco mural arts organization and using them to create an enormous public painting just down the coast.

Beneath Pacifica is a celebration of the ocean, marine life, community, and the enormous creative possibilities of architectural-scale painting.

And Precita Eyes is part of the story.

You can read the complete story of the project in our article, Beneath Pacifica.

The Difference Between Painting a Mural and Building One to Last

One thing I've learned over the decades is that artistic ability and technical painting knowledge are two different disciplines. Both are important.

Our studio comes from a background that combines fine art, mural painting, graphic design, and professional painting contracting. That combination has been invaluable.

We understand the chemistry of coatings, the importance of surface preparation, the challenges of adhesion, and the ways that different materials behave when exposed to environmental conditions.

We also understand that working artists constantly develop new methods. Sometimes a technique that works beautifully on a small canvas becomes impractical on a hundred-foot wall. Sometimes a rough concrete surface demands a completely different approach from smooth stucco or properly prepared metal.

Professional experience allows an artist to recognize those differences and develop efficient solutions.

In our work, the relationship between artwork and protection is particularly important.

We frequently use gloss mediums and protective coatings supplied through Precita Eyes, including Sheercoat on exterior projects requiring additional protection.

Our Oceana and Terra Nova school murals have demonstrated just how well these finishing systems can perform over time.

That matters because public artwork should not be considered disposable.

When a community invests in a mural, the goal should be to create something lasting.

And when we can combine excellent materials with years of accumulated experience, we give those paintings their best opportunity to survive.

Why We Continue Choosing Precita Eyes

Over more than thirty years of painting murals, we've had plenty of opportunities to work with different products and suppliers. We continue returning to Precita Eyes for several reasons.

First, the quality of the paint is exceptional.

Their highly pigmented acrylic mural colors provide the richness, flexibility, and coverage we need for professional work. Their specialty pigments and finishing products allow us to pursue effects and treatments beyond those of ordinary commercial house paint.

Second, we have decades of experience with their products.

We know how the colors behave. We know how to mix them. We know how they respond to different painting techniques, and we've seen firsthand how well our finished murals endure.

That experience builds confidence.

But there is a third reason, and perhaps it's the one I appreciate most.

Precita Eyes is part of our artistic community.

This is an organization built by muralists, for muralists, in a city that has one of the richest traditions of public mural painting in America.

Its founders and artists have spent decades giving something back to San Francisco.

They've painted walls, taught children, collaborated with neighborhoods, preserved public artwork, and helped artists develop their craft.

I admire that enormously.

When I think about the kind of work I want Bogdanov Studio to leave behind, I think about many of those same values. We want to make beautiful paintings, certainly. But we also want to enrich the places where people live, work, go to school, and raise their families.

We want to inspire young artists. We want to contribute something lasting to the Bay Area communities that have supported our family.

And we want people to feel that public art belongs to them.

Here's to the Next Generation of Murals

I sometimes think about those first two murals I painted in our Potrero Hill home back in 1994.

A winged gargoyle. A painting of my wife called Donna's Birds.

At the time, I couldn't have imagined all the walls we would eventually paint, the enormous animals we would bring to life, or the public places that would become part of our artistic history.

More than three decades later, I'm still painting.

Now I have the pleasure of painting alongside my son, Isaiah, and helping younger artists develop their own skills.

We've created artwork for high schools, local businesses, private residences, athletic facilities, and municipal buildings.

And through so much of that journey, Precita Eyes has been there, supplying the colors.

I would love to see the relationship between our studio and Precita Eyes continue growing, with more opportunities to share our artwork, celebrate the artists who create it, and introduce new generations to the extraordinary world of mural painting.