Time for an Update:

December found me in the not so freezing city of Dresden, Germany where my final project was to come to fruition. Both apprehension and excitement coursed through me as I looked to tackle this rather big project of painting a wall mural of Noah's Ark. Even with all my preparation...or rather lack of...I found myself faced with a large empty room with bare white walls that needed to be, within a month, filled with colour and cute friendly animals that little children will appreciate. When I left that last Monday heading back to South Africa, I returned with much disappointment in myself for having failed at this project. Let us review the month of December:

Preparation:

This was a fairly easy task to accomplish as I had to, with the help of my fellow artist Katie and the instruction of the pastor, remove light switch cases, cover with tape and plastic the floor, skirting and skirting edges, corners, the window, the light fixture and all areas that needed covering. There was also a strip of decor that ran through the middle of the wall separating the top white half of the wall with the bottom dark maroon half of the wall. This was a slight pain to remove as it left some residue on the wall that we needed to scrape off without causing dents in the wall or scraping the paint off.

We also bought various paints from Hornbach, with obvious miscalculation, but the main paint, the white paint was enough.

This is Hornbach:  

The painting:

The pastor of the church proceeded to show me a painting technique that would make painting faster, more effective and less messy. I must admit I am definitely grateful for that as painting that base coat all around the room went pretty quick and progress seemed to be moving better and faster than I had anticipated.

Next on the list was the painting of the sky. That was one of the areas I assumed would be easiest but was one of the areas that was not completed. With help from a fellow church member the ceiling was painted a magnificent sky blue (great colour) and nice big fluffy clouds were supposed to adorn the ceiling, giving the illusion of a mildly cloudy day however we just never got around to painting the clouds.

The rest of the wall was going well as I painted the blue sky and Katie was right behind me, adding a magnificent blend of blue and white to add depth to the sky. It was better than any blending I could ever do I must say. Unfortunately she could not help me for the full month I was there and had weeks when she was at work leaving me to work alone for the most part. Regardless, I managed to paint a three tone sky (which Katie would blend together seamlessly) and also added some hills in a dark green. After all this I painted the bottom area a light brown for the ground and all this should NOT have taken the 2-3weeks that it took. Maybe I should have taken my procrastination jokes a little more seriously.

Anyway in the 3rd week we started adding details to the wall, and I must admit that I enjoyed this part a lot. This was the painting of the stones, rocks and a tree.These actually turned out pretty good especially after Katie added further details to them using a sponge with just the right texture. As the nursery started to finally take shape, we had to stop work and no further developments were possible. No ark. No Animals but I do look forward to going back there and doing some decent finish work there!

As for pictures I actually have none and I, right now, do regret not taking pictures of the developing room. Anyway I can probably show the Before pictures now and the after pictures in a later post

In the mean time I'll be keeping my pencil sharpened!