So, I would guess I have put in about 45 hours so far on the Pirate Island Mural. It is going pretty well…the thing that is different than when I painted the Octopus Show Mural is that I now have an 8 month old baby. She doesn’t sleep through the night and it’s hard to get away for long periods of time. This is almost 2 weeks worth of painting…I finished the octopus show in two weeks…but some days I painted for 10 hrs! Its just not possible…plus I think this one is definitely larger than the last one.

Today I was busy painting. I was working on the outlining which I love to do, because it’s the finishing touch that makes it look so awesome…it just takes a lot of time. So I was painting and concentrating really hard and I heard some noises. Up until that point I had not really paid much attention to any noises because the building I am painting in has a lot of strange noises…but this time I thought I heard something fall over…so I peeked around the corner of the trailer and saw a groundhog! Well it kind of freaked me out…but it freaked him out even more…and it went back into his hiding spot and kept really still. I watched it for a while until I got brave enough to go open the door and scare it out. He didn’t want to go out at first, he just sat and stared at me…and then finally ran off. I laughed about it later…but I was kind of nervous about it being in there with me.

Anyway…today our friend Steve came out to look at the marquee to see about putting vinyl lettering on it. But we decided to just have me letter it. I think it will be fine. I am sure I can make it look good. I painted in the sky around the scroll which will be where “Pirate Island” will go eventually.

I have been having some problems with my paint. It’s a lesson I had to learn the hard way I guess. I bought latex enamel, thinking it would be easier to clean. The guy at the paint store assured me it would be just as good as the oil based enamel (which is what I used for the octopus show). I should have tested it. Now I am stuck. I didn’t expect the paint would have a hard time sticking to itself…I had absolutely no problem with the oil based paint. It always went on nice and smooth. sometimes I had to put an extra coat on to cover properly…but this stuff just slides right off. I called Shaun (from the paint store) and he said it’s because of the glossiness of the paint. So I have tried to buff it with steel wool…it kind of helps, but not totally. I really need another solution. Shaun told me that they did have some stuff you rub on with a cloth that softens up the surface of the glossy paint so it will take repainting. I might try that, since the steel wool isn’t working all that great. Of course, with tomorrow be the holiday, I am not going to be able to try it till Saturday. It has been really frustrating because I have to repaint things sometimes three times to get it to stick. That doesn’t work so well when I am outlining, so I am hoping I can come up with a solution to this problem. You can believe I will not use latex enamel for painting on aluminum ever again!

This picture is the only part of the mural that is totally finished!

And the pirate ship picture up above with the jenky looking windows in the back…I am in the process of repainting that whole part of the pirate ship.  I don’t know what I was thinking when I painted it the first time…I  think I completely forgot about perspective while I was doing that!  Yikes.  The second try is coming along much better.  Probably post is this weekend sometime when it’s done.