There is always something happening at this school even though it is shut for the holiday. There is a Sure Start building, football training, athletics, the school club itself open for a few days. Even on Sunday someone can to clear away the debris from the 60th birthday party on the Sat.night. They had hired the school hall. It has become a community centre with social services staff based there. These take photos of me, saying that will email them onto the woman who moved to Australia. She used to run the club and my children new her very well.
As for paintings murals though?
I made a pigs ear drawing up the short rainbow wall. I had rushed the preparation on the design and my scale drawing covered a wall 4.1m long, when it is actually only 3.1m long! This resulted in having to grid up the wall with oblongs not squares. I did 40x50cm not 50×50. This works fine as I have done it before. Then I drew seven rainbow colours on the front wall but managed to draw eight colours on the side wall? A trap that somehow I knew I would fall into how ever hard I tried to avoid it. Then I had to totally move the lettering as I realised no one would be able to read the word ‘Club’ down near the floor behind the fence, which is where it would have been if I followed my design. This meant that all the faffing about with the oblong grid was a total waste of time and I had to just do the letters with no reference in a totally different place. The other thing I did was abruptly end the A2990 on the corner, my design as I said was rushed and it did not go onto the adjoining wall at all! It turns out this is a major compositional omission and I spent some time tyring to get it running behind the rainbow and out the other side. It was also led to the eight coloured rainbow mishap.
Its all about colour balance and relationships. In the old days I would start with very thin washy paint and build up the strength of colours in layers. But I had a partner then and two experienced mural painters working fast this was not an issue. This is a job done for mates rates using a step ladder, and to save time I have unwizely gone for thicker paint in one go, to save repainting large areas twice or three times or more. This has proved really difficult as its all about balance and relationships. Those should be arrived at holistically. I am trying to predict them.
So today is a critical day as I will have to readjust some of those colour balance/relationships.
Lastly I want to say what a fantastic colour burnt umber is. It may unlock my issues today.
