Snags!  Already I’m hitting snags!  Ah well, it’s not so bad as all that.

As it turns out, the mossy green is a bit lighter than we’d hoped for.  Mike went down to the paint store after painting a few panels to see if they could adjust the colour, but they were hesitant what with so much of the gallon being used up.  He asked why it turned out so much lighter than the swatch we’d chosen from.  They said it has something to do with the fact that we are using flat paint.  That if we’d used a satin or gloss, it would be closer in colour to the swatch.  Who knew?   I guess we do now.   So Mike bought a gallon of a darker, coordinating colour of green and will paint the remaining two panels with that.  Four of the mossy, two of the darker green.   Hey, variety.

Snag #2  I found it nigh unto impossible to copy my small (about 4″x4″) drawings to the larger (4’x4′) panels.  In the past, when I’ve made block prints, they’ve always remained the size they were, so to speak.  I’d never had the need to enlarge the scale after having completed the artwork.   Getting the scale right and attempting an exact copy was very difficult and frustrating.   I realized I’d almost have to just start from scratch with new drawings.  I know that muralists often use overhead projectors for getting their work onto walls and the sides of buildings so I got on-line to look into prices and types of projectors.   After an entirely unscientific search (based mainly on “what’s cheap and versatile?”), I chose the Artograph Tracer Projector.  It can enlarge up to 14x the original size of your art piece, which oughta be plenty.  It’s small, lightweight, simply constructed (so, no major parts issues) and seems to be pretty good quality.

I can hardly wait to get it in the mail.  Should be any day now.  In the mean time, pictures of the garden…..