Category: Murals

Doesn’t look like very much in terms of the entire wall, but some square footage was covered today. And look at the sunshine! The day began in thick cold fog, quite a shock from sunny Three Rivers!  

Today my plan was to paint on the scaffolding without moving it until it was time to photograph the day’s work. The plan worked! I just kept going down to a lower shelf until I ended the day on the ladder. Can’t wait until tomorrow because I get to start on the Honeymoon Cabin! This is what Timber Gap looks like when you are standing above it on the non-Empire side. 

On one of the rainy days, Inspector Gadget went to the mural and let me know that the old store and post office needed work. Today it received work, and here are the results.  Because it was sprinkling and threatening rain all day, I worked from the ladder instead of the scaffolding. It is easier to grab my gear and run for cover when I am closer to the ground. Also, if I am working in small patches and it sprinkles on the wet paint, less is ruined or perhaps the ruination is more easily repaired. 

When I paint at home, it is usually in silence and solitude. Sometimes I listen to the radio or to music. Sometimes I talk on the phone, but only if it rings or there are calls that need to be made. Some days the only person I talk to is the UPS driver. Sometimes there are no cars passing by for an hour or two at a stretch.  When I paint in Exeter, there are people stopping by regularly. I may talk to as many as 20 people in one day! The noise is very interesting – diesel pickups, many different delivery drivers, the forklift from the Exeter Sun-Gazette, the train whistle, back-up beepers, the noon siren, the fire station’s outdoor telephone ring, one of the restaurants trundling their garbage to the dumpsters on a cart, and during the week before Valentine’s Day, a refrigerated truck’s compressor. It is a very different experience than quietly painting in oils at home. I hope I am able to return to silence and solitude with contentment!Today White Chief got repaired, and many of the snowless spots had to be snowed on (erased)!I worked my way toward the sidewalk end of the mural, and got a little bored with gray so there is a patch of dark green just because. (it will be trees later)Then, I couldn’t stand it another minute, so I finished the old Mineral King Store & Post Office! Maybe. It was so fun to do detail that I began another “snapshot” (what should I call these things??) at the other end. Both sets of rechargeable camera batteries died, so you don’t get to see this unless you go to the mural in person.  Rain is forecast for next week, so it may be a little while before I get back to “the city”!

(Such creative titles lately) Today I painted mostly without incident (never mind the forehead smash against the scaffolding board tail when I leaned over to lock the wheels). There were lots of nice visitors – some folks from Scotland, Marge and Lou from Three Rivers,  and my dental hygienist were some of the guests today. Jay refilled my paint jars for me because I was too wimpy to get the lids off the paint buckets (my wrists hurt from all that sky yesterday!) and Betsy helped me hang my banner. Each day is full of generous kind helpful acts of encouragement and friendship! (Shall we all hold hands and sing Kumbaya??) The banner looks a little schlocky, but it is (mostly) readable.White Chief is all messed up. This is the area where Keith noticed the projection was beginning to slope downward. We had to do a jump-up and now I am trying to patch the 2 parts together. I couldn’t see the problem until I had lugged IT out of the way and back to its parking place. Suddenly, there was White Chief all distorted. Hmmm, guess I know what I will start with tomorrow.As a small consolation prize for the trouble with White Chief, I fiddled with the detail on the Old Mineral King Store. Detail is so very rewarding to this pencil artist! I could spend a week just perfecting this “little” picture, but have far too much anxiety about the  size foresight to get caught up in that sort of derailment. 

What an incredibly clear and beautiful day! Truly fantastic – February is my favorite month. Too bad it doesn’t have 31 days, and August only 28.  It was not a day of tremendous progress. Betsy helped me figure out that I am slowing myself down by using the photographs to do the first layer of mountain tops. I should be using the photos of the maquettes (model paintings) because they are much simpler than the photos of the mountains.  All the decisions about how many patches of snow have already been made. Duh. I’m the one who made those decisions and already figured out how difficult it is to paint directly from the photos. (Is this fuzzy thinking a result of bashing my head on one of the tail ends of the scaffolding boards on Saturday??)You may not be able to tell, but I removed the halo from Banjo Guy.Because of camera distortion, it appears as if I am over halfway down the wall on the mountain tops. I can assure you that I am not halfway yet – you can see a bit of a seam just beyond where I stopped today – that is half! (see? cameras DO lie!!) 

Today I did not paint in Exeter because it was raining. I also did not paint in my studio because it was too dark to see! However, my friend and ‘puter guru Barbara took these wonderful photos on Sunday.This was Ashley’s other paint-by-number accomplishment. See the little guy with the banjo? It got a little silly the night we were projecting on the wall!Barbara’s camera has a wider angle lens than mine – here you can see most of the mural, but it still doesn’t show the far right with the MK Store and P.O. This thing is So Very Big. Yes, I know I keep saying that! 

This was quite a productive day as you can see by all the photos. (And I could see Sawtooth from It while I was painting Sawtooth!) First, after retrieving my wagon, mixing my paints and moving It, I have to climb It.  My niece documented the ascent so that Neighbor Bob can see how it is done. (see those built-in ladders?) Now, for the day’s work: Ashley helped block in color using a paint-by-number system. I mixed three shades of brown, assigned each a number and then wrote the numbers on the wall on some of the lower parts. She was great – even mixed more color herself when she ran out!  You can see that I finished Empire, Sawtooth and all the way through the top of Mineral Peak. Ashley did the bottom part of another “postcard” but it photographed weird. This Tom Sawyer way of getting more work done is great!

Today I learned that the reason you shouldn’t paint in the rain is because every drop of rain that hits your paint will show! Good thing I plan on repainting the sky.  Michael insisted that I look into getting a lift to work on the sky, and perhaps the entire mural.  I told him I was having so much fun climbing the scaffolding that I hated to give it up. He offered to build me a jungle gym in the yard. . .  So my Exeter/cabin friends (see? Mineral King-Exeter connection!) Jay and Keith gathered the information for me and a lift is scheduled for the week after next. Thanks, you two! 😎 Meanwhile, the scaffolding is good for the upper mountains. They have enough detail that I only have to move It (from now on I will refer to the scaffolding as It) once during a day’s work. What got finished today looks miniscule compared to the entire project, but I think it is about 10′ x 3′, which is a mighty large painting for someone who is accustomed to painting 10″ x 8″! These are the somewhat improvised mountains – mostly accurate, but slightly stretched to fill the unexpected 9′ that was left over when we ran out of mural on Projection Night. Tomorrow rain is expected, but if I paint, It will be scooted back so you can see the day’s work without It covering Sawtooth.