Day 13 & 14 on the mural the poppethead , eagle and lighthorse and rider

Day 13 - The Poppethead scene

 I decided to move onto the Poppethead scene. It was quite complicated and kept me on my toes especially as it was blowing a gale and blowing my paint containers off the table and shaking the step ladder..lol's. It was good as the paint dried almost as soon as it hit the wall so I could make corrections quickly.

Day 14 - 
 Now I came back to finish the lighthorse and rider.I ended up going for a bit of a likeness of Charmaine as  the rider although the reference photo was blurry and it's not as accurate as my usual commissioned portraits would be. It's also much simpler as it needs to read well from a distance as well.
 I am pretty happy with the result. What a difference decent reference photos make! The horses at the Co Op were in B & W and taken on an overcast day. This one although not as sharp as I'd like was taken in colour and on a sunny day which made it much easier for me to get a good result. All the mural images look better in the flesh than in photos.

 
A closer view of the horse & rider. 
Charmaine, a local resident dresses in Lighthorse ( WW 1 ) outfit and goes to  Anzac celebrations and other events. Here she is standing below the monument in the main street near the RSL where the mural will be.

Now to the Eagle - The wedge tail Eagle is the totem image for the  Awabakal aboriginal people who live in the area.
The grasstree in the box to it's left is a significant plant for them and used for many purposes. There are many impressive specimens growing in the areas bush with some big ones around the summit of Mt Sugarloaf. They are very slow growing - about an inch a year and the older ones grow a large trunk. Some can be 600 years old! I feel it's important to preserve them for future generations.

 Here's the central image with the eagle and poppethead.

 I realised I'd forgotten to give the cart driver his whip so I added that.

 I going to  fiddle a little with this man's head ( below) - I feel he needs a bit of a shadow  there from his hat and more hair . He has a widows peak ( balding bit) in the original photo but I think he'd look better without it.. So with the stroke of a brush I'll make him younger..lol's .
If only it was that easy in real life.

 Here's the cart driver.

The main figures at the shop - they must be brothers..I just noticed a drip of paint in their apron. I'll have to fix that..