what I'm working on now

I still have not been able to settle down into book work, but I am attempting to use my artistic skills. Right now, I am painting a mural for some good friends who are going to have a baby. When I offered to do this, I realized that I had never painted a mural before but I thought, "Hey, I'm a professional illustrator, right? How hard can it be?" With my confidence in overabundance, I assured them that I could get the wall done in a few days, maybe a week.

So I drew up some sketches and got the okay for this one:



And calmly began painting in the background.


Then the snags began. My oh-so-smart idea of projecting the image onto the wall failed miserably. The room was too shallow for the image to project accurately and I spent the day wrestling with it.



Finally, I just gave up and drew everything freehand. Which was quite time-consuming.


And of course my pencil marks were so messy, I had to outline in paint just to see what I had drawn.


It was quite a relief to actually start painting color. But to get to this stage took about twice the amount of time anticipated.


And at this point, I just hope I get the mural done before the baby gets here!



to be continued...