Mural Work

 I know I said my next post would be the finish to my trip up north from a few weeks back, but I didn't get to it before I had to leave town again, this time to do a job up in Traverse City.  The folks at the Boardman River Nature Center hired us to do an interactive mural there, and I wanted to post some works in progress pictures.

Lori and I started work around 9 am Monday morning.  The mural is approximately 8 feet tall by 17 feet long.  In the center area kids will be able to play with and place magnets of various critters, so the first step was to coat the wall with metallic paint, five coats of it to be exact.  Once that dried we primed the entire surface.

Around noon Lori, the mastermind behind the whole project, began laying out the mural on the wall.

Once the placement of the main elements were in, we began blocking in color.

 The goal by the end of day one was to get the wall covered in paint, and we did.

Mid-day on day two we had put some detail in, including a variety of invasive species on the left (the mural is meant in part to highlight invasive vs. native species), as well as some detail in the river bottom at the center of the mural.

End of day two saw more detail, including paddlers and kayakers on the river, the farm along the river bank, and more plants in the foreground.

Day three of course saw us working on more detail stuff.  Birds and fishes and more plants went in, as well as fleshing out the forest background.

Blogger has a great new feature where if you click on an image it opens up a photo album with all the images from this post.  Try it, and scroll through the photos to get a better look at the progress.


We are pooped, and sore, but hopefully we will be done today.  I will post some close up photos once we're finished.