First – PICTURES! PICTURES! PICTURES! My wife said: “More PICTURES!” So, here you go. The first two shots are of the background in progress before and after the house was placed in the scene.
The pencil works I do are easy because they are usually compact and, if I mess up, I can erase or, worse case, tear it up and get a new piece of paper. But this…this is someone’s WALL – in their house…it’s HUGE, and you can’t tear it up and start over. The lake is a BIG part of this composition, and I knew that to mess it up was equivalent to “buying the farm”. Mistakes are not an option. Small ones yes, like the issue I had with the house earlier. Those are the kinds of thoughts and anxieties that were zooming around in my head as the time to paint the water in the lake approached. I began studying water everywhere! There is a similar lake in Winter Park at Lake Island Park where I went for lunch on many days and took pictures to study the colors, reflections, and the wind effect on the lake. I was ready! Using the texture of the wall to help with the wind effect and a half-loaded fan brush in my hand, I applied the paint and at once went into CARDIAC ARREST. It looked like a second grader smeared green paint all over my beautiful blue lake! Within a moment I had to produce a new plan. I grabbed a smaller brush and other colors of paint and started repairing the insanely fast-drying vomit on my mural, resulting in one of the most successful sessions of working on this project.
There is tweaking left to do, along with more reflective water in the foreground coming soon, but I am pleased with how it turned out.
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