Mural Progress to Date

A burst of rapid progress from the last three days. Rather, the sky is almost done and it is curing (drying and sitting idle before I attack the mistakes I made in it and finish it), and I had the nerve to start working on the middle panels for the first time in a couple months.

Titanium white is the artist's version of white-out. Works rather well to recreate a fresh surface for redrawing lines and adding form to the mountains!

Comparing the Mural with the Study

From Yesterday, 5/9/12

Looks kinda exciting, keeping in mind that it's not blended yet at all. :D

Renewing Listings

The four images on the right are from my Etsy shop, Irethkalt.etsy.com, and I have just renewed their listings. I have dozens more to go. Power on. :)

Doings on the fourth day.

This is the fourth day of my full-time artist endeavor. I worked on the mural all day long, from about 8 in the morning to about 6:30 in the evening, with breaks for meals, coffees, emails, getting the snail mail, and other such miscellanea.

I had taken a week and a half break from painting as I was finishing up my last two weeks of work. I just had STUFF to do as I was getting ready for my break from traditional employment. Oh yeah, did I forget to mention? I'm now a full time artist, absolutely ready to either make it or break it. It was time. :)

As I was saying, Monday being my first full day, I cleaned up the studio: vacuumed, washed drop cloths, cleaned my pallet, re-arranged the furniture to better use the space. I began to make a stencil of the clouds for the reflection in the lake. It needed to be done sometime, and why not while the whole thing was dry?

It took me a little while to figure out that the papers were too heavy to combine in one full sheet and expect it to stay taped to the painting. So, each piece of copy paper was taped individually. It looked like the set of "Wheel of Fortune." Once traced, I laid it all out on the floor, redrew with marker to get a mirror image on the back, turned it over and became cutting it out. Slowly. Just the cutting lasted for hours over 2 days. (Tuesday was a little busy with other errands, and I lost a little time.)

I finished the cutting this morning, and then had to tape it again to the canvas, so that the cloud image was flipped over the water at the horizon and drawable onto the water areas. After that, commencement of painting in the clouds began. I also repainted the lowest clouds in a much better color. You wouldn't know from just looking at it how many hours this took.  '_'

Photo journal of the last two weeks, Part 1

There hasn't been any posting on the mural, or the study for the mural, since June. That's because life happened! In the last two weeks there has been a flurry of activity related to the mural, and the study for it (thanks R!), for the same reason that there was such a lull (thanks R! :P). With a newfound hope, and zeal, and discipline, I continue to work.

What a huge part of my life this mural has become. How strange to look back at the photos I've been taking all the while, and think, that was a year ago, or that was two years ago. I've learned so much, been terrified, been disappointed, been surprised (pleasantly!) at it's success so far, been aching to get it done so I can move on to other things, and been patient because I know there is so much more work to be done, and been excited when I can catch a mental glimpse of the end of the road, of how I know it'll look in the end.

I've had lots of help all along the way, but without a certain engineer, and uncle, and parents, and boyfriend, and yes, a scruffy little  naughty puppy dog to keep a sharp eye on, I wouldn't have beautiful canvases to work on nor a plan to hang them, I wouldn't have great practical advice and cheerleading, I wouldn't have a space to keep everything and in which to work in comfort and security (and for free), and I wouldn't have the discipline to keep at it, and furry company, without them. Ugh! There is still so much to do, sometimes I think it'll take me another 3 years to finish, but I have to just keep on swimming and not get hung up on the time, unforseeable obstacles, or the fact that I've taken over my parents' studio and they kinda want it back!

I haven't taken any pictures of the progress on the mural itself, I'll have to take care of that later (there is some progress, but nothing major yet). The most work done since my last mural post has been on the study. I actually thought that the stage it was in was good enough to leave as is and move back to the mural proper. Wrong! I still need a lot of experimentation to determine the coloration and process, and I have to have a finished painting with many, many progress photos to see just exactly what to do on the huge one, step by step. There is not enough paint, time, and energy to get a large section done only to realize that I've made a mistake! I have already taken the knife to the little study and scraped off failed experiments, and luckily I think I've only wasted about a quarter teaspoon of paint, and a couple hours time. I don't want to think about how much could be wasted on a 6x6 foot panel!

Without further ado, here is the study, untouched since June, in it's new setting, roughly two weeks ago. Beside it is my plan I made that day, thinking that I'd get that much done in one morning. Ha ha. I'm still working on those tasks.

And here is a few days' worth of work, putting in the blue shadows.

That's it for right now, time to go to bed and get rested up for another productive week.



Wakeful House, Sleeping Tree.

Watercolor ACEOs, Done yesterday and today. Really, all I wanted to say was in the first one, and the next two are like the melody and counter melody seperated. I'm not yet sure I like the second two as well as the first.