Red Solo Cup

No, this project hasn’t driven me to drink yet! These little cups just solved a problem of mixing containers for the test strip colors. (See the photo section for a couple of shots of this process.) It became more elaborate than I thought it would at the beginning, but I learned a great deal about how to tackle the large, seemingly one color areas of this mural. I foresee more solo cups in my future when I get to the lake and the pond areas!

I did these test strips throughout the week and studied them, making adjustments till I had what I thought would work. Then I canoodled quantities for the actual wall using the base premise that one ounce of paint covers one square foot of wall. I’ll spare you the math, but suffice it to say I used up a lot of scratch paper. I wound up with 15 bands of color I wanted to use for the sky and one unscheduled trip to Sherwin-Williams for more paint and empty paint cans to store my colors. I mixed up my batches of wall paint Sunday morning and finally got down to the school by 1:30. It was exciting to actually put true color on the wall! I made myself wait until one section had all the bands down and it was time to move the scaffolding before standing back and looking at the wall. I would say it was an 80% success. I liked the color, although it may still be a little too bright. Adding the clouds and the ground haze you will see in the distance may solve that problem. I also noticed though, that where the bands meet is too visible. I will have to do some extra blending to clean that up this weekend when I work on the right side of the bump out. I can hardly wait to get back to it! This is the first step to setting the background value, from which all other values will be determined.