Day 8 painting the mural

 Actually this is another session on Day 7.

I had fun last night roughly painting the horses in the mural.I also lightened the ground under the verandah which made a big difference! I like things that make a big difference..lol's

These give you an idea of the size of the figures.. The hard bit is to get them to look good closeup but still have enough zap to look ok at a distance. 
If they don't have enough contrast they may look good closeup but they are just a blob from a distance . But if you have them bold enough to look good at a distance they may look over the top closeup.So it's a constant paint , go back and see how they look , adjust , have another look etc.
Another thing to keep in mind is they have to read correctly in the context of the whole mural. If they are too obvious it will look weird. If you are that far away looking at someone in the real world you can't see their features much.
Lucky most of the blokes have moustaches as that makes it easier as they stand out!I'm still fine tuning the faces. I'll do that at the very end.

 

 The first version of the horses. I like them as individuals but when I come back in the morning they are positioned wrong. One is further to the front than the other. Grr.
 They are like that in the small version but you don't notice.. Any slight discrepancies are magnified in the larger version once it's projected.. This is why the colour rough is so important.It usually prevents problems like this.

 Day 8

 A bit scary but it has to be done.. Painting over much of the horses to restart.

Notice the lines to help me position them . I measured everything carefully this time. I decided to enlarged the reference photos for each horse scene. Wow what a difference ! I could now see the building has brickwork at the side that shows the groundline better.That will make the building sit more convincingly into the scene .
 While enlarging part of the 1890 photo I noticed that in the background are 2 kids. One teenager lounging on the fence with his cap pulled down and hands in his pockets (he looks a bit of a lout) and the young 10 year old boy who is picking his nose..lol's.. Things haven't changed much in 120 years!

Oh well I spent 1.30hr getting them in a better position .
Ah much better.They are ready for me to come back and detail and add the harness etc.Now to start the man and horse to the left of the building.

 You can see the lout lounging on the fence in the background. I haven't included the nose picker who was near him..

 A pretty rough face . I'll fix him later.

 That's it for this session.

 It's progressing more slowly than I like but it is a big detailed mural! I'll be glad when I have the Co op to the stage where I can start work on the rest of the mural.. It should be a lot faster when I do as each image is only small.
 I did some more later in the afternoon.Here are some photos..I did a bit more of the LHS horse- I'm not happy with it so I'll come back later. I've also done the harness and wagon on the RHS. They looked good until they dried darker so they will need another lot of ligher colours to give them a lift.