I teach painting classes at the Baker Community Center in Millington, Tennessee. At the end of the hall is a room with a large wall mural. As you can tell from this picture, the mural had a lot of damage to it (not the stuff in the lower right hand corner but the pieces of mural that were coming off the wall). The manager at the center asked me if I could do a mural in it's place. "Sure" says I. After getting some photos of the area I make a plan to paint an arial view of Millington on the wall with different outstanding locations and attractions painted in a collage effect over the map. "Good plan" says I and with paint in hand I proceed to paint the background over the present mural only to find that the "mural" is actually just a wall papered photo. As the wet paint touches the paper, the "mural" crinkles and the paper proceeds to come off the wall. There is nothing to do but strip the wallpaper off the entire surface of the wall and then begin my painting. "Easy enough" says I only to find that after one hour, the lower right hand corner is all I've been able to scrape off.
In a panic (since I have allowed myself only three days to create this masterpiece) I call one of my art students who lives close by. Jule, the self professed queen of "Get it done now" comes to my rescue with wallpaper remover and within about three or four hours we get the whole thing removed. Here's Jule scraping away at it. She and I are both about the same height so our shortness was a definate issue in the difficulty of the wallpaper removal.
In an attempt to keep as close to my three day schedule as possible, I stay later than I planned at the community center and base coat the wall. This was done with regular house paint and since I didn't have enough of one color I had to mix in a second color at the bottom but I think it did just fine since I knew the whole thing would be covered up later. The graduation of color kind of helped in the creation of a more attractive background, too. It kinda made for a neat abstract or is that just Jane's Perspective?
My plan had been to actually finish the background and the arial map. But considering it took half the day just to get the mural off the wall, I'm satisfied with getting the base coat finished. Plus, I was pretty tired by this time. Painting a mural as big as this one which was 10' X 16' is hard enough. Scraping wallpaper off the area first added to my fatigue. I was looking for a BC powder and a good night's sleep before I began day 2.
In a panic (since I have allowed myself only three days to create this masterpiece) I call one of my art students who lives close by. Jule, the self professed queen of "Get it done now" comes to my rescue with wallpaper remover and within about three or four hours we get the whole thing removed. Here's Jule scraping away at it. She and I are both about the same height so our shortness was a definate issue in the difficulty of the wallpaper removal.
In an attempt to keep as close to my three day schedule as possible, I stay later than I planned at the community center and base coat the wall. This was done with regular house paint and since I didn't have enough of one color I had to mix in a second color at the bottom but I think it did just fine since I knew the whole thing would be covered up later. The graduation of color kind of helped in the creation of a more attractive background, too. It kinda made for a neat abstract or is that just Jane's Perspective?
My plan had been to actually finish the background and the arial map. But considering it took half the day just to get the mural off the wall, I'm satisfied with getting the base coat finished. Plus, I was pretty tired by this time. Painting a mural as big as this one which was 10' X 16' is hard enough. Scraping wallpaper off the area first added to my fatigue. I was looking for a BC powder and a good night's sleep before I began day 2.