west lafayette mural: day 4

today we finally had nice weather.  well, nice-er weather, anyway.  the wind from sandy is finally gone.  the air is still cold.  but bearable.  so it was back to the wall.  i met pete at 11 and we quickly started in completing more of the base color layers.  the front pylons are now nearly covered in color and ready for their details and finishing work.

we will be creating a worn-looking 'patina' on the base metal colors.  the steel and white enamel will rust.  the bronze will oxidize to a jade color. and the copper-green will reveal portions of unoxidized copper finish.  we will also be adding stenciled details of gears, motors, chains, pulleys, and all kinds of other industrial and mechanical elements.

we really got a lot of the slug-through-it-and-get-it-done work finished today.  i got up on the ladder and did the sketchy parts with the bucket and a brush, which is a bit scary at 18 feet in the air and reaching for 20 feet.  pete finished up most of the other robots from the 8 foot ladder and then started raking the background color into that ridiculous texture.  *digression start*: 2 of the pylons we are painting are smooth, have been primed previously (a looooonnng time ago previously), and the paint goes on like butter in a pan.  stencils spray crystal clear lines and edges.  it's a wonderful surface.  the other 2 pylons, however, are covered in this texture that is like a mixture of concrete and pearlite and it is a bitch the paint.  it takes 3 times as much paint to cover it, because it is 3 times the surface area with that texture and the stencils can't sit flat to the surface, so smaller details tend to blur:*digression end*  but we got it done and now it's ready for spray paint.

next week is looking promising to put in some time and try to get it finished up.  but there's still a lot left to complete.  however the base is there and you can start to see the overall look popping out.