Well, things have been at a stand still with the mural for a few weeks, but I think that'll be changing soon, as my schedule should be opening up. Anyways, back in early June, I blocked in the green for all the grass and discovered how difficult it actually can be to figure out just what the color of grass is.
So, what is the color of grass anyways?
I took a 4' x 4' section and first painted it the blue-green you see in the upper right corner here. No go. Too dark at the bottom, and too blue. I then repainted it the more limey green you see. I then decided that too was a no-go, as it wasn't really muted enough. Well, that was a grand 4 hours repainting one area of a wall!
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In the end, it was just too bright and chromatic. Me and Kat chatted, I did some more research (staring at grass everywhere!), and came back with this.
And just what is the color of the sky?
Sadly, we've also been talking about the sky color. The more I go and pay attention to things, the clearer and clearer it becomes to me just how pale, baby blue the sky really is. I'm not looking for photo-realism here, but I do want an immersive visual experience. I want it to feel like the sky is above and in front of you. So, I'm probably going to be painting over the upper half of the sky one more time, to knock it down to a paler, softer blue-- probably about the strength of the blue about half way between the horizon and the ceiling line.
What I'm learning about Painting with Acrylics on a Mural--
Of course, I'm learning things about acrylics along the way.
Acrylics dry darker. Oops!
For instance, I recently cued in on the fact that while watercolors are dark when wet but dry lighter, acrylics seem to be lighter when wet but dry darker. Sooooo, that's good to know! I'm also discovering how very very difficult it is to match colors when painting with a new batch of color. Holy Cow! I'm not quite sure how to solve that yet, but am just working on getting better at mixing.
I like using a smaller 2" brush
I tried using a larger brush to block in some of these areas-- I think it's a normal 4" wide brush for painting walls-- but I actually found it physically exhausting. Maybe I've just got to build up super wrist and forearm painter muscles or something, but I found the weight and ergonomics of manipulating a 2" brush much better. Even on something the scale of this. It's just so much easier to feather things out, cut clean edges, and generally work.
Maybe I should try using a small roller?
The next time I block in colors, I'm going to try and use a small 4" roller, and see how it goes. In the end, I think I spent waaaaaaay more time on this stage than needed, particularly as I'm going to be painting over a lot of this basic grass color as things continue. I think just blocking in the colors to get the forms on the wall and then to go from there with my layers would be more time efficient and potentially more flexible.
