Fairy Mural

I didn’t just learn how to do backgrounds and paint scenery at Mimi’s Magic Garden daycare center but I also learned an entirely new way to paint. As described in my entry “Our Story So Far…” when I first started using oil paints, I’d pour solid colors into bowls and then, using brushes for each color, put small portions of the colors on the surface of the wall and mix them right there on the wall. For the elk, this allowed me to get the texture of the long fur as I swiped the brush through the colors naturally. For the deer, this allowed me to get the texture of the short hairs as I dabbed and stippled my brush against the wall, speckling the colors through and against each other. For the turkey, it was horrible, trying to get the different shades in just the right percentage and in just the right spot to get the iridescent effect of the feathers. For all of the wildlife murals, in fact, there were moments of struggle where the layers of paint simply would not mix in the right degree for the colors I wanted.

Painting the ocean mural during the month of October, I found that this sort of technique was not going to be possible. Not only was the surface area of the figures too large to treat this way but also the walls were stucco and the paint dried fast when applied to it. So, all of my colors had to be mixed before being put on the walls. If I wanted light blue, I mixed it in a bowl first and then put it on the wall. If I then needed a medium blue, I’d need to darken the light blue in the bowl first and then apply it to the wall. This was fairly easy to adapt to and once I started doing it, I wondered why I hadn’t done that to start with.

Another really important thing I learned at the daycare was “light to dark” and “dribble mixing.” My first attempt to paint the fish in the ocean mural was to start from the shadows and progressively add my main color, blue, and then progressively add white for the highlights. For those who don’t know, a couple of the paints that I have, I treat with a bit more caution than the others. Those colors are “safety red” and “black.” All of the other colors have a bit of give to them, mixing more thoroughly before becoming a main color. Mixing blue with green, you need to practically pour blue into it before it becomes more blue than green. Adding a teaspoon of red to anything and you have condemned that color to be red and nothing but red for the rest of its life until it dries. I kid you not. Black is similar in that, if you get a color dark enough, you can never really come back from that. Adding more of the main color or adding white just makes it a gray version of that color because the black is still clinging to it for dear life.

So, when I painted the first fish, not only were the blues really gray and drab moving forward from the shadows but I also could not get the highlights light enough or bright enough. Trying another fish, I started with the pure white highlights first and progressively added blue until it was mostly blue before finally adding black for the shadows. This is where I also learned the “dribble mixing.”

This is what my work station setup usually looks like. I lay down newspaper on whatever surface I’m using as a table. I have a plastic bag for garbage and a roll of paper towels because things can get messy sometimes. A jar of thinner for cleaning, a bag of brushes, paint cans, and a bowl for mixing colors. The second pic shows my mixing sticks. To save paint and also to control how the colors get mixed, I pour a main color(usually white) into my bowl and then use one of these sticks to dip into the paint cans and drip droplets of a different color into my bowl. With the fish, this enabled me to slowly travel through the scale of values at a controlled pace. Not only do the colors stay light but they also get very bright right in the middle, much brighter than they come out of the can. It can be slow going but also the sticks can get a fair amount of paint on them, so, sometimes I can put just a tiny drop into the bowl or I can put a thick dribble, practically a spoon of color into the bowl, depending upon what I need.

The final, big thing I learned at the daycare was the color wheel, as it applies to oil paints. While painting one of the purple flowers, I of course started with white and added a little bit of blue and a little bit of red to it. It looked a little dull and dark in my bowl but I thought it was a lavender color. When I went to apply it to the wall…it was gray! Not a purplish-gray; just gray! I was very surprised and confused so I googled it and it turns out, the primary colors, particularly when dealing with oil paints, are yellow, cyan, and magenta, not red, yellow, and blue. Rustoleum does not make cyan or magenta, so, I ended up having to get the small, artsy tubes of those colors in order to make purple.

 

Fairy Mural

Size: 8’6” x 7’4”

Time: 87 hours

Medium: oil-based paint

(click on “Read More”)

Mimi, along with wanting unicorns in the garden, also wanted fairies everywhere. She mentioned having them hiding amidst flowers and bushes and stuff and for people to progressively notice them as they looked around. I took inspiration for this mural from the tapestry “Unicorn in Captivity” with the unicorn in the middle and a field of flowers all around and behind it. I wanted to give the unicorn a more willowy look right from the start, since that is more what I think of as a unicorn. Not just a regular horse with a horn on top but a more ethereal creature, a combination of horse and deer. While looking up pictures of skinny unicorn designs, I came upon a lot of them that were babies, so, decided to add a baby to the picture. When looking up flowers, since the wall was blue, I wanted to put pink flowers around the unicorns, which were going to be white. I wanted to show a variety of flowers because this is a garden, after all, so, that’s why they’re all different.

 

I used the Last Unicorn screencaps as inspiration for the mother unicorn. The Last Unicorn was too skinny for me, so, I did make the legs and knees a bit thicker. I also lengthened her nose to make her more horse-like but also made the ears bigger like a deer. When deciding upon the colors, I knew I wanted to go with a traditional white for the bodies but I didn’t want to make the shadows blue, afraid that the light blue shadows would make them disappear against the background. And once I had decided a warmer color for the shadows, I thought I’d make the horn, hooves, and hair more metallic, like gold and silver colors. The hair was accidental because when I first looked up references for hair that looked like metal, I couldn’t find anything that I was happy with. So, I found a regular, warm blonde dye job, and went with that. When I went to paint it, from the light, almost yellow-white, I accidentally skipped several colors in between by dribbling too much brown and yellow into it. So, it came out darker right against the lighter areas. …but that’s how gold shines. So, I did originally want gold, switched to blonde, then ended up accidentally making it look more like gold, lol.

 

For the design of the baby unicorn, I really wanted something more cutesy and deer-like rather than horse like, to really exaggerate how he’s still really young. Some of my favorite things to paint for these guys were the bodies, which, are about 3 layers of white gloss enamel oil-based Rust-Oleum, straight from the can. When you lay your hand over their bodies, they are cool and smooth to the touch. I also really loved painting the horns and getting that silver metal effect for them.

When doing the fairies, I used pictures I found online as reference, from old storybooks and figurine sets. I tried to get a good amount of boys and girls, so, that it wasn’t just a “girl’s wall” but a general children’s wall. I also put in two black children fairies to represent the demographics of this area. Susquehanna is mostly white but I knew there were a couple of kids who weren’t and might be going to the daycare. So, I wanted to give them a part of the mural that they could identify with. Everyone has fun at Mimi’s Magic Garden!