Murals | Cabin Art

Indoor Mural, Day Two

I started Day Two on the mural at St. Anthony’s Retreat in Three Rivers with the idea that I could finish it, maybe even in the morning.

Fall down laughing.

First, I needed to fix the slopes below Comb Rocks. It was mushy in the mural, undefined, hard to read. See?

I looked out the window to see how the hills actually look. Of course, it is the wrong time of year, the wrong lighting, and the wrong angle; that’s where I try to blend artistic license with believability.

Artistic license is also why I have made Comb Rocks more prominent in the mural than they are out the window.

Better, more defined now. maybe too well defined, but leaves on the branches in the foreground can disguise that little problem.

That took longer than I expected, so I took a break. First, I photographed the live oak out the nearest window, thinking it might be helpful.

This is a view out the nearest window. I wonder if those bells ring.

Go back to work, Central California artist, because you are procrastinating and it isn’t advancing the mural.

Branches on the oak tree and leaves on the branches. And these “bells” don’t ring; they are my clamp lamps.

Time for lunch! I love working here. 😎

River and bank sort of done. I found a river picture among the 30,000 photos on my computer that was helpful after I flipped it the other direction.

The oak tree on the left, the bank along the river, the sycamores, and the river itself don’t seem quite right to me. So, tomorrow I will see how to make these things look more believable.

Indoor Mural, Day One

It is possible that painting inside a little chapel at St. Anthony’s Retreat is the most pleasant mural painting experience I’ve ever had.

It is 1.3 miles from home.
The room where I paint is quiet.
The lighting and the temperature are steady (it is indoors!)
Occasionally someone stops by to see how it is going and to offer a helpful suggestion or compliment.
THEY PROVIDE LUNCH!! (always very good food).
The quiet makes it possible to listen to a wonderful 3-book series on Audible by my good friend Shannon VanBergen, called the “Glock Grannies“. I read the books, but it is so much fun to hear them read to me by a professional.

This is a scene cobbled together from several photos of Three Rivers as it shines in the spring. Look at how much I got done in one focused day of painting!

The faint little sketch and some of the photos are taped up, and the tallest ladder is in position on a drop cloth.

Sky, spaces for clouds, and the shapes of the hills. 2 ladders side-by-side is a helpful method.

Clouds. The light is rather low in the room, so I couldn’t tell if I was covering the wall very well.

Gabriel brought some high-powered lights and suddenly I could see that the sky had been too dark, and the clouds needed more work.

Those lights produce a lot of heat, so next time I will bring my clamp-lights. Because the wall surface has glossy paint and the mural paints are mostly transparent, I started putting an undercoating down before adding detail.

I use the blank wall beneath to clean off my brushes between colors; this helps give a sense of what will go where and puts that first coat of paint on the wall.

I got a phone call and needed to write down a number. (No, don’t call the number, please!) I started the tree, and worked a bit more on the clouds.

When I paint murals, there is a lot of noise in my head. Listening to Shannon’s books occupied the part of my brain that keeps yammering at me that I have no idea what I am doing, and that this is too hard for me. So, on this day of painting, the noisy and negative part of my inner dialogue didn’t have a chance. I just listened and painted, and it was lovely.

Three Rivers

New Indoor Mural

St. Anthony’s Retreat is a conference grounds here in Three Rivers, a gathering place by many people for many reasons, not just a place for Catholic retreats. I like to go there; it’s close to home, has happy memories, and most of the people who work there are my friends (I don’t know all of them. Yet.) Plus, if I am there around lunchtime, they feed me really good food.

They want to convert a small windowless room to a prayer chapel, and got the idea to have me paint a mural on one of the walls so that it doesn’t feel claustrophobic in that space.

The wall isn’t entirely blank at this time; there is a beautiful oil painting by the talented Father John.

The wall is about 14 feet long and 10-1/2 feet high.

We got the shape and size measured, marked, and taped.

“We”? Yes, my trusty, competent, and willing assistant came along.

Stay tuned. I’ll show you the mural as it grows.

mural

Faded (poppy) Love #3

Let’s get those pinkish poppies re-oranged. (Funny, they don’t appear pinkish in this photo.)

Can I be finished now? There are 5 kittens, some knitting, weeds, and a stack of good books at home.

I put back the branches on the tree to the left of the door but am ignoring the dreaded door itself.

Truthfully, this mural is not in a highly visible place, it is rarely noticed, and no one cares if I refresh it or not. I don’t think anyone will notice if I leave the dreaded door. So, maybe I am finished. I didn’t sign it this time, so maybe I am not proud of it. Sigh. Maybe I am not finished after all.

Three Rivers mural three rivers poppy mural

Faded (poppy) Love, #2

We have had weird unusually cool weather here in Three Rivers, and I took the opportunity to continue working on the faded poppy mural.

You can see the lower section needs refreshing.

I started with green among the lower poppies. You can see that the middle ground of poppies is pinkish.

The lupine haven’t faded, so I am working around them. I did add some white tips to the blossoms on the far left in this photo.

I keep backing up to see if it looks as messy far away as it does from up close. The way a mural can look so terrible up close and so tight and photographic from a distance never ceases to amaze me. Feels magical.

Now I have added green to the lower right AND greens to the next layers of hills, fading as they move back. (If you are interested in ArtSpeak, this is called “aerial perspective”.

I worked more on the poppies, all the while lamenting how much was left to be done and getting COLD in May!! The pinkish colored ones haven’t been retouched yet.

There are some poppies remaining, along with the dreaded door. A friend (a very important person) really likes the tree, so I will retouch it on the left side and probably tackle the dreaded door, as long as the weather cooperates.

A list of what remains to be done, depending on the weather and my availability:

The dreaded door
The tree
Pinkish poppies, both close and far
Adding more popcorn flowers (or painting out the ones I just added)
More grasses to overlap the poppies
The lowest horizontal edge, which is currently covered in dirt and splatters from the rain.
Brightening the lupine, just because I love those colors and want more, more, more

I think that the distant Alta Peak and Moro Rock, along with the rocks on the hillsides can be left. Their fading makes them look farther away than they did when I first painted the mural, which is the way it is supposed to look.

This is KitCarson, who always goes first, like his mama, Scout.

poppies

Faded Love (of Poppies)

The first public mural I painted was in 2008 on a Seatrain storage container at my church. 2008 was a “super bloom” year of poppies, and we were in love with those flowers.

Eleven years have passed, and most of the yellows have disappeared from the mural. Yellow+blue=green, so the greens are blue. Yellow+red=orange, and the orange is now pinkish. Any yellow in brown is gone, leaving lavender or gray. The results are rather dull. It isn’t in a high visibility area, and because the darks and lights (“values”) remain, it looks okay (from the back of a fast horse.)

But in my opinion, it either needs to be refreshed or painted out completely.

Better, and now you can really see how faded the old poppies are.

It was harder than I expected. I had forgotten how quickly acrylic dries on the palette, on the surface and in the brushes, how difficult it is to control the edges and the blending with that mural paint. So, I abandoned the left side and went for broader areas in the background.

I enjoyed listening to the river in the morning, and I was thankful for the cloud cover. But after 6 hours of painting, I decided that was enough for a day. Maybe if there hadn’t been a weed-eater going in the background, I would have lasted longer.

This project is going to take much longer than I expected. I might just ignore the door and leave out the tree.

More will be revealed in the fullness of time.

poppies poppy mural Three Rivers mural

Regreening a Mural

I had a little encouragement and companionship while working on the regreening of the Mineral King mural. It wasn’t the normal type, with questions and requests for business cards.

Winchester closer to me, Cliffie here in the foreground.

You can see how the willows on the right look grayish bluish by contrast.

This might be finished, or maybe after letting it mull for awhile I will see ways to make it better. At least the greens are back to their correct colors now.

One of the most difficult parts of painting a mural for me is that the brushes don’t hold their shape. They get clogged up by paint, the ends splay out, and it is just impossible to draw with them or make edges look clean or accurate or anything at all like I want.

Sigh. Best viewed from the back of a fast horse. . .

mural

Unfading a Mural

The primary colors of red, blue, and yellow plus white are how I mix colors to paint murals. The paints are supposed to be highly pigmented and lightfast, but yellow ALWAYS fades first. Since green is made from blue and yellow, greens turn to grayish blues.

Two years ago I repainted the big Mineral King mural in Exeter because of this problem. When I ordered paints for the job, the paint company said of my yellow choice, “We no longer recommend that yellow for outdoor use.” Well, that certainly explains a lot. So now I am refreshing murals a little at a time, as I am able.

This mural was looking very tired to me. The owners weren’t unhappy with it, but it was hurting my eyes and my pride.