Allow me to simplify this "pile" in my own Jane's Perspective way. First of all you don't need ALL of your paints. Concentrate on the color wheel as you pick a basic red, yellow and blue, then add a green, orange, purple, black and white. You can mix anything else you need from these colors and a regular size tube of each color weighs in at merely ounces so you're only up to carrying a pound at the most so far. I once painted on a beautiful spring day when the green grass was growing, the green buds were shooting up all around me, and the trees were covered in green leaves - so what color did I forget to pack? Green! So I mixed blue and yellow all day and got some fabulous greens. So don't sweat the hundreds of tubes of paints you think you might need. You can get by on way less and it can be a wonderful challenge to your color mixing abilities.
Here's how I do it. In the garden section of my local super store, I found a folding stool that had an attached pouch. When you unfold the stool, the zippable pounch is as big as the whole underside. On the outside of the pouch were pockets for garden tools. Inside the pouch I was able to fit my paints which were stored in the waterbucket (an ice cream size plastic container) along with my water and apron, a small roll (not a new roll) of paper towels and a snack or lunch in a baggie that became my garbage sack. Jane's Perspective says to look for "double duties" for each item. Outside I slide all of my brushes into the pockets. Once folded back up, the stool legs became the handles. Canvases and an easel fit nicely under my arms and I'm good to go. That makes only three basic things I have to pick up to carry. If you can't find a stool like I use, a folding stool without the pouch can be slung over your shoulders OR you may not even desire to sit down while you paint. Another option to sitting is to carry a small blanket instead of a stool, spread it out on the ground, and use a table easel. With lunch, you'll feel like you are on a picnic. 
So there I am all set up and ready to paint - you can see the gardening stool I use really well in this picture. Oh, and check out the crazy sunbonnet.
If you still can't tell how big this piece is by this photo of me standing at the corner, here's Jule photographing the piece with the room tables set up. 
After the buildings were put in place I was able to use a mixture of greens to paint fields and sponge larger masses of trees.
After a break I began in the upper right hand corner blocking in the planes. I painted shadows on the planes just as I saw them on my reference photos so there was actually no complicated thinking of which way a cast shadow would go or where the sun light was coming from. I found myself identifying, instead, weird shapes and triangles darks and lights on the planes bodies.
When it came to detailed signage I used painters tape to block off straight edges. Many of the sign areas had to be double coated but with time of the essence I found that I could easily paint two to three coats in between working on sketching or painting other parts instead of just "waiting for paint to dry".
Jane's Perspective is all about the tricks and techniques of painting that create realism without all the hassle. For example, the brick pillars that held the "Welcome to Millington" sign needed shadows on one side. I painted (as you can see from the top of the pillar) one side a darker grey than the other. Then I painted the bricks using a square brush that was the exact width of the bricks I wanted to create AND I painted each brick the same color. Because the "morter" was darker on one side, it makes it look like the bricks were a darker color also. 
To sketch everything in place, I used while chalk. If you look carefully you can see the lines of the chalk around the building painted in the lower right hand corner of the mural. Once painted, any excess chalk was simply wiped away with a rag or a slightly dampened paper towel.
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.
Now I begin to paint the background and you can see that the background (particularly around the face) is my backup to correcting shapes and errors that I want to refine. I can paint closer in on the forehead and cheek or leave some of the underpainting show to round out part of the chin. Don't just blindly paint the background in, use it to refine your painting.
As you paint the background you are not painting an object but you are painting the negative space or the space around the object. 
As I paint the negative space (the space around the drum stands) or the background I begin to create the shape of the drum stands by NOT painting the drumstands.
Closer up on the right under the bass you can see the negative space painting creates the bass stand.
So now Elvis is coming to life. I add more details and then restrain myself in these impressionistic works from going "too far". With a painting like this you step back a lot to see what the piece looks like from a distance. When you get just to the point of recognition in the face or the objects you STOP.
Then I paint the dark blue/purple paints with their highlights. Notice how some of the yellow peaks through on the leg on the left. Not much is peaking through here however so you see that you can make a choice to leave lots of "peak thrus" or just a little "peak thrus" or no "peak thrus" at all. I have students who start this process and completely cover the strange colored underpaintings. Jane's Perpsective is if you like it, leave it. If you don't like it paint over it.
Things get really strange on the face. If you followed my blog about realistic portraits you'll see that I follow the same steps/process here only I just don't go in for all that detail. Just like in the realistic portrait, I start with the shadows. Here I've painted the shadows in dark brown over the blue face.
Next, just like in the realistic portrait, I paint the highlights that I see on the face.
Then I fill in the middle areas with the flesh tone of the face. If I work really fast some of the colors blend together right on the canvas. If they don't I get a block of color. If I like it I leave it. If I don't I continue to paint over it until I get a resemblance - not a perfect likeness - but a resemblance. After all this is an "impression" of the person.
You can see I also worked on the hands so that I wouldn't have to worry about mixing the exact skin color again. This can really be a problem in acrylics unless you have a stay wet palette or are good at matching colors.
In this part of the painting the jacket is going to be blue and the opposite color of blue is orange so I paint the jacket orange. His face is going to be peach which is like orange and the opposite of orange is blue so his face gets painted blue. The instrument is brown which is kinda hard to figure but put in it's simplest form, brown is warm like a dark orange so the opposite of orange is blue. It's not rocket science so don't get hung up, just paint. As long as you paint an object in an unexpected color, you're good. And don't panic (see next picture)
OK, I told you not to panic. Sure that blue face and hands on my American icon looks strange but bear with me. I mean I could have thought of the head and hands as pink (a shade of red) and painted them in green. Doesn't matter, it's my painting and I can paint it like I like (what an attitude).
Here's what all of the figures in the painting look like painted in opposite colors. The figure's dark purple/blue pants are now yellow, the yellow drum set is now purple, the white jacket (again I figure the closest to white is light blue so I went with orange). You can figure out your own colors. Nothing is "wrong". The shoes on the final painting are going to be white but instead of orange I decided to do a blue underpainting cause I wanted some neat blue shadows on them - see, even I break my own "rules". Jane's Perspective says "chill out". It's called "art", not "work".
I wanted the picture to have a dark background like the photo so for the opposite underpainting I also thought in terms of values. If the background was going to be so dark, to keep the painting light and exciting I painted the underpainting light shades of the opposite colors (the blue on the floor is thinking opposite of orange which is like brown which is basically what the wooden stage was all about - a lot more exciting than plain old brown wood - you'll see what I mean in the next step).
