I left sunny Three Rivers and headed down into the fog. I remember worse fog when I lived outside of Ivanhoe with my parents, so this wasn’t too awful.

The mural looked like this. I seem to forget where I left off from week to week. I’m pleased with the repaired mountains. Intern and my Number One Fan (Josie brings me treats, encouragement, and posts to some FaceBook group) both noticed the improvement.

I began with orange blossoms.

Intern began working on another layer of white over the words on the label. Since there was only one color used, instead of using a palette, I told him he could dip straight out of the jar. Might have been a mistake, but one we can recover from. When the paint dries, we will simply peel up the plastic, because mural paint is acrylic, and acrylic is plastic.

Next, he worked on the lower border of the auditorium inset.

The two orange groves in the Twin Buttes inset weren’t good enough. So, I made them better. Here are the steps:

Next, orange blossoms on the close branches on the right side.

After Intern left, I was bored* with orange blossoms so I decided to tackle the most difficult piece: the auditorium. Although I prefer drawing architecture to almost any other subject, painting from a poor photo on a rough wall while sitting in the mud presents some challenges.

Most of what remains is tight detailing. This might mean that I’ve almost run out of ways for Intern to assist. However, he will be quite helpful on the distant orange blossoms.

*Probably not actually bored, just wanting to do something with more impact so it felt as if I was making measurable progress.