Challenging Indoor Mural, #7

This is entry #7, but documents Day #5 of painting.

I had 2 days away – one to teach drawing lessons, a weekly occurrence, and the other to follow an AT&T technician around while he sorted out numerous internet problems. (Terrible company, fantastic service technicians.) This meant I need a little thinking time to plan my next steps after getting reacquainted with the project.

Step One: document how it looks at the beginning of the day:

Hmm, I wonder if I can finish everything south of the pillar today. Feels ambitious, but if one sets a high goal, one might reach it.  (“One” would be me.)

Alrighty, then, let’s hit the wall.

First stop to observe. Getting that fiddly background stuff in isn’t too bad. It is fun. I love architectural details, whether in oil paint, mural paint, and most especially in pencil (HEY! SPEAKING OF PENCIL, THE CABINS OF WILSONIA IS NOW ON AMAZON!)

I can do better. As I study the mural from a little ways back, I decide the pillar that will be painted on the metal beam (beam? pillar? post?) will look too wide from Mr. Art Patron’s chair. So, I taped off where it should go, and stretched the buildings and sky to fill the added inch or two. Since I premixed a jar of sky color, this wasn’t difficult to pull together.

Then, I blocked in the rest of this lower right corner with large patches of color so I would know where to paint which textures.

Whoa. Getting too dark to see. I moved all the jars of paint and other stuff out of the way (but left the tarp – wait until we see it with the floor, which is an excellent color with the mural.)

Nice. Now I want to see it through the conference room window.

What a cool view!

I have 3 painting days before Mr. Art Patron returns from his vacation. This challenging indoor mural most likely will not be finished, but it will be close! Nothing like a deadline to keep pushing me ahead. Mr. Art Patron didn’t really expect it to be finished – just expressed the desire. Who can blame him? He has a beautiful office and a great business, and a paint spattered middle-aged woman on a ladder listening to Dave Ramsey or Michael Hyatt on her paint spattered laptop probably isn’t a real draw for business.