Sunday evening I went down to Exeter with my neighbor and friend, Steve who is one of the owners of Rocky Hill Antiques.

This is a great big wonderful antique store, open 7 days a week, in an old packing house with 40 vendors. Very good place to shop. (This mural could get to be an expensive venture if I don’t focus on painting and stay out of the store!)

This will not be an official Exeter Mural since it is outside of the designated mural district, so we skipped several steps such as painting the maquette, plastering the wall, getting all the appropriate approvals.

My friends Jacquelyn, Kathryn and Louise showed up to learn, help and provide moral support.

First, Steve and I established the borders of the mural, centered on this wall. The Captain Obvious sign about Parking is going to disappear, even though it is not in the way.

Louise is figuring out how to get the projection to be vertical. There is a ton of distortion if the overhead projector isn’t centered on the wall. The plan was to do the left side first, and then the right side, because my transparency was bigger than the projector screen.

JKL were tremendously helpful. I felt a little bit like Tom Sawyer, getting everyone else to do my work. However, I did have to keep replacing worn out magic markers.

The lettering has me a teensy bit worried. I don’t know how professional sign painters get everything so perfectly lined up!

The bugs were going crazy on the projector screen, but we didn’t trace them. It is tricky to not be in your own way while tracing, but we were flexible. I only faked tracing on the back of Louise’s leg – kept the cap on my marker. 😎