Three Rivers Museum Wall Painting, Completed!

The painted designs on the wall for a new exhibit called Native Voices at the Three Rivers Historical Museum are finished!

The last day began with little green men, called “The Gathering”. The lighter green was ready for a second coat, and the rest of the shadows had to be drawn in. That should have been very simple, but I struggled a bit on some of the placement. (There was plenty of touch-up base coat paint for erasures.)

This is how the whole wall looked.

Next, I had to figure out how to put the shadows on the far right diamonds, called “Rattlesnake”. Instead of transferring the pattern a bit to the right of the existing diamonds or drawing it in pencil, I used masking tape to “draw” it. This took a lot of thought and measurement. I would think that it was ready to paint, stand back, and see yet another missing strip. Sometimes I was protecting the diamond edge, and sometimes I was shaping the shadows.

Everything took two coats of paint. I wasn’t sure the tape would peel cleanly, but it did fine. While looking here on my computer screen, it appears that some of my spacing is off. Some of those lines got eyeballed, so the entire thing is bound to look hand-painted rather than like applied vinyl. My customer, the Mineral King Preservation Society, looked into vinyl but chose paint instead, a choice which suits me very well.

While the paint was drying, I started touching up the drips and wobbles, along with covering the visible pencil lines and smudges from the graphite transfer paper. The smaller red diamonds called “Quail” had no shadows. Thank goodness, because these were small and detailed. Maybe I should have taped them, but every job is a completely new challenge, and I just bumble through, wishing that sometimes I could have a couple of jobs the same so that the new knowlege wouldn’t be wasted.

Finally, I decided to peel off the tape, risking disaster. (That’s an exaggeration, because as long as there was paint remaining in the necessary colors, anything could be fixed.)

I peeled and only saw a few parts that needed retouching. Acrylic paint (or latex or whatever non-oil paint is) dries so fast, which is a real bonus on a job like this.

Finally, here is a look at the whole wall.

The display will have cabinets in matching colors placed strategically beneath the colorful wall designs.

A few more facts:

1. The colors were chosen to not clash with the other 2/3 of the room. (The red is magical—sometimes it looks red, sometimes it looks rust, and sometimes it looks pink, and get this: the name is pumpkin spice!)
2. The other 2/3 of the room is for the Mineral King exhibit, a thorough look at geology, mining, the Disney era, and cabin life in, of course, where else, Mineral King.
3. The Native Voices exhibit is put together by the MKPS for the Three Rivers Historical Museum. That 1/3 of the room isn’t the responsibility of the MKPS, but the MKPS has paid employees who are real go-getters. They know how to find money, and they wanted the entire room to look cohesive.

This is going to be a great display, and I encourage you to visit the museum!