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.

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.