The study must be done in order to make the mural make sense.

As I work through this project I learn lots and lots on what to do, and what not to do. Such as, never underestimate the power of a study, and, when you do something this large (like a 12' x 17.5' mural), always do a study and do it right!

Working on the 2' x 3' study for the past three of four weeks can easily feel like a huge setback. It's far more helpful to think of this as simply doing what I should have done in the first place. I did do 2 color studies early on, but neither of them were done in a methodical manner. They were useful to show the persons concerned approxamately what the end result would look like, but not very useful as a roadmap for doing the actual painting. I had a lot of confidence in my ability to "know" what to do colorwise when it came to that point. Eehhhhh........

When it came to applying the color beyond "trees and green and water is blue" (all those wonderful secondary and complimentary and other-ary colors that are like myriad musical notes supporting a melody), and sideways to boot as I was putting the vertically connecting panels together (my ceilings are only 10' high, 2' shy!), I came to realize just how ingrained in my brain (and everyone else's brain I'm sure) is the imutable up and down as we know it, and conceiving of this in a context where down was now at my left hand was mind boggling. I just stood there looking at the paintings going "ooooh noooo."  How do I solve this? Move to another studio where I could stack my panels 2 high, with all the added troubles of paying rent and moving the whole party? I entertained the notion for a week and a half I think, doing research and generally feeling miserable and hopeless. I even thought about installing the mural early and working on a scaffold. (If some of you are laughing now, it's ok, I'm laughing now too. ) My uncle helped me realize that the solution, or a possible one, would be to do another study, and make it a full, complete one that I could then take and apply literally to the mural. Not feeling very optimistic but willing to do just about anything I set about it.

So, I got a pad of primed canvas paper, cut 6 pieces to 12" square, mounted them on foamcore, printed the original final draft of the pencil drawing, gridded up everything, and transferred the drawing, square by square, thinking at first to do it sideways,forcing myself to see the shapes and values in an abstract manner, to train my brain to not get hung up on drawing/painting sideways. After that I had a thought: why not assemble the whole study and paint it right-side up instead of trying to learn to paint sideways? Seems like an obvious choice now. So, I did that, and went through every step I had previously taken on the mural: drawing, blue underpainting, and now local colors. I've got the blues and greens now, and what's left are the browns and yellows, and then the study will be at the point the painting is.

Once that's done, the real science begins, and when the study it done done done, I'll transfer all the color work to the panels, all right side up and occasionally laying them on the floor together to guage the progress. I'm sure it'll evolve a little as I go, and that's not a problem. It may take me another 2 or 3 weeks to get back to the mural proper, but I think this is, and will be, time well spent. Ah well. We all have to learn our own lessons somehow. To conclude, here is a visual progression of the last few weeks. :)

This is how I was looking at the painting some few weeks ago, trying to do mental gymnastics in order to forget about gravity and make believable atmospheric perspective. It made me cry.

I am happy I kept all those files I carefully made in order to project the drawing onto the canvases.

Action shot!

The corners were curling, and that wouldn't do. Time to break out the rubber cement.

After glueing the corners down, I used part of my library to make 'em stick. Perhaps an interesting cross section of what I read, lol.

I couldn't have gotten this far without Liquin drying medium! How fast this went....