We Begin!

After months of delay, we finally had perfect circumstances (a no-school Friday, a retired husband and no holidays) and were able to finally begin this project. My dear husband, Bob and our two sons, Peter and Joey and two of our friends, Nate Wirkus and Bill Miller pitched in and framed out the block wall and drywalled it. The work went very quickly and by early afternoon, we were packing up tools. Seeing the wall transformed from block to a smooth surface made me realize just how large this canvas is! The heavy lifting portion over, we thanked everyone and the rest of the weekend, Bob and I worked on getting the drywall mudded and the paint purchased.

After some long interior debate, I decided to go with an oil based medium. The color quality will be richer than latex with more depth of tone and the durability should be better. The deciding factor was that an oil based paint will blend well with my artist oils. The grid system I plan to use to transfer the image from the studies to the wall also had a side benefit when it came to paint. I drew out the grid on a transparent overlay that I will lay over each study panel. Each grid square represents one square foot of the wall, so it was easy to count the squares of each color and determine how many square feet (hence how much paint) I would need for each basic color. I had to choose those colors I felt were absolutely necessary to buy and those which I felt I could either mix from the cans of paint or my tubes of oil.

I would up getting three tones of blue, one off white, two greens, one brown and one rich yellow ochre.

Time will tell if these will work for me or not.