Sketchy Beginnings

Time to put some paint on the wall! And I did put lots of paint on the wall, though it doesn't look very colorful at this point. The locations of the mountains, large trees, and water have all been sketched in. The reason it does not look very colorful at this point is because I have not begun to use full-strength pigments yet. I have been mixing the pigments with a watered down white wall paint, to create what is called a "wash". I mixed up three of these washes: a slightly brown one for the trees, a blue tinted one for the water, and a greenish one for the mountains in the background. You can see the difference just enough to make out the shapes.

 The room was actually full of people while I was working, so I wasn't able to stand back enough to get a shot of the whole wall, but you get the idea. The room is a classroom and I knew I would be working while it was being used, so I was a little worried about noise and interruption. Turns out it didn't bother me at all. In fact, it kept me focused, and I enjoyed listening to the conversation going on around me as I worked.


There is one thing I may have to change: using the ladder. If I had set up a camera to take timed images of myself while I was working, I'm sure I would not see myself doing any painting in the time-lapse version. What I would see is a seemingly endless dance of moving the ladder, climbing it, climbing back down, moving it a bit, climbing up again, climbing down again, and them starting all over again. It wasn't very efficient. Also, I cannot directly face the wall while I'm working. It was OK for the big brush strokes I was using to put up the sketch, but it won't work when I am doing the detail work. I'll have to figure something out.

Next task is to go through hundreds of photographs of rocks and streams to see which piles of boulders I want to put in the water. Then I will draw those to scale on the grid and sketch them in the same way I did the trees and the mountains, using a different color wash. More details about that next time!