I painted a mural for a friend's model train display.  Please follow along as I paint and join in my frustration and hopefully pleasure as I progress.

110 square feet of raw canvas!

Begin with the sky.  And try to ignore the night sky stroke marks (a little problem of paint drying too quickly) which will be disguised by clouds and a big old moon.

Seven hours of painting the farm scene. I lost sleep over this one as I wasn't happy with the colours, perspective ... just about everything. 
Note the windows are covered by flaps which will also be painted.

So I went back and fussed ... 

At the suggestion of the owners, I added rocks, and cows, and fences.  I tried putting in a jumping catfish but it didn't quite work.  Even the fences and cows can't quite stop it looking like a golf course.  And I think the trees in the corner look kind of like a castle.  I'm going to have to work on that.  And stop saying things like that, because now everyone will think it looks like a castle.

Next stop is winter mountains and blending them into the farm scene.  And maybe fussing a little more with the farm scene.

 
The winter background scene for the Christmas village ... before trees and after trees.  I think the battery was almost done on my phone for that first picture.

And blending into the gorge.  This is my first shot at the gorge and river. 
I have lots to fix up.  But I'm happy with this ... for once.

I had to take some time to shade the sky a darker blue. 

I'd like to start the clouds, so I'm not doing them all at the end,
but somehow I want to keep going on.  
Time for a little bit of Newfoundland.  Sketched in and then basecoated.
I have a lot of detail to go.

I need to find some visuals with scree (stones left behind from a glacier). 
The corner area is to be a train junction and I'd like to make it a little less lush than the previous walls. 

I'm having a little difficulty with the light in the basement which is directly behind me.  This looks better in the picture than when I'm working on it. 

As a side note, I've put in about 43 hours of painting time at this point.

Time to take a week off and visit friends. 
I'll be working on the last section (besides clouds) which is fall forests at night. 
I'm looking forward to it. 

This is my favourite wall, likely because autumn is my favourite time of year.  The moon looms large, but will be covered by clouds shortly. 
I'm almost done, just the challenge of clouds. 

I wasn't entirely happy with the farm so went back and added some trees in the fields and shading. 

I decided to start with the clouds over the farm. 
This is the first and furthest level of clouds and I'm wrestling with the type of clouds to appear above these distant clouds. 

I learned not to run the clouds into the white mountain tops
as it made the mountains disappear. 
I had to go back and paint out the clouds in that area on the left.

I loved working on this wall.  

It made me stretch myself (in many ways) and taught me a lot.  I hope they enjoy it for years to come and can't wait to see the trains in action.

August 2017