Repainting Mineral King, Day One

On Wednesday, I began repainting the big Mineral King mural in Exeter. Gave me something to do while I waited for Samson to get civilized at the veterinarian in Exeter.

So much has changed since I painted this mural in 2009. The attorney who told me to use his office as a staging place died last month. The photographer who gave me a key to his studio has retired. The coffee shop on the other side of the mural where I got water for my brushes has closed. The mural has turned blue. I used to do this blog on a desktop and now I’m on my second laptop. I used to have a cell phone.

But the people were just as entertaining as the last time. 

1. A large woman said as she labored past, “I couldn’t stand to work around all those food smells.” (Food? I just smell paint.)
2. Larry said, “How do you keep from getting paint on your pants?” (He was joking.)
3. Dick said, “You gonna finally put color in those snapshots?” (He was joking too.)
4. A man talked at me for about 15 minutes (felt like 45) about music; I think that’s what he was talking about, but it was the musical equivalent of Artspeak and I have no earthly idea what he was trying to communicate. Very friendly and talkative. I just kept painting and occasionally responding with something that probably sounded as intelligent to him as he sounded to me.
5. Another man told me he couldn’t wait to get back into the mountains to backpack because he was going to go from Wolverton to Mineral King, and it would take him about 8 hours. (Really? I did it the opposite direction a number of years ago, and it took about 6 days.)
6. A man asked, “How long will it take you to pull the blue out?” (“Pull it out”? I’m covering it up.)

And there were plenty of really nice complimentary people who wanted to know what I was doing. I explained about the color fading, and not one had noticed that all the trees had turned blue. “Oh! Now I see what you mean!”

This is what I saw at 8:30 a.m.

Blue trees and ground, flowers completely faded away.

My paints were locked up at the Exeter Chamber of Commerce until they opened at 9, so I messed around a little with some old paints.

Hard to fathom that the ground was once tan instead of shades of lavender, gray and blue.

My first task was to open boxes of paint and do some pouring into smaller jars and then mix new greens. The paint company no longer recommends the yellow I was using for outdoor murals, so I don’t want to use any of my other greens containing Cadmium Yellow or Azo Yellow. Now it is Bismuth yellow, which almost looks chartreuse to me. It’s in the bucket; the old yellow is in the smaller jar.

Got 2 greens mixed and just dove in. Had to do something while I waited for the cat.

This is how it looked when I stopped for a quick snack that passed for lunch. Any excuse to sit in the shade – the sun is relentless on this south-facing mural.

Kept thinking about Samson, feeling the sun, wondering why the mural team didn’t hire someone who knows what she is doing, and finally set the goal of finishing that ground hill section in dirt colors before calling the vet. (I borrowed Trail Guy’s Jitterbug, in case you were wondering if I had caved in and gotten a cell phone yet.)

And now for the most overused cliche in English these days – At The End of the Day, the mural looked like this.

Tomorrow I will work on detailing that ground section, and then see if I can reach the lower section of trees from the bed of the borrowed truck, which I will drive over from Mosquito Lake.

Hunh? The Central California artist may have gotten too much sun today.

(Samson is home, and very very happy to be here. He tried to bite his way out of the box in the car. Thank you for asking.)