A Three Panel Mural
A long time ago, Pauli and I painted a mural on the side of a building in Northwest
Indiana as part of a course I was taking in art at Indiana University Northwest
Campus in Gary Indiana. We painted an astronaut doing a space walk (taken
from a National Geographic, of course!) in about an 8' by 10' square on masonry.
That was a lot of fun and we had always wanted to do another one.
Well, after we had an above ground pool installed in Summer 97, we knew that
eventually we would need an enclosure to shelter the pool pump from the elements.
This small enclosure grew into a nice 7' by 10' roofed building mostly because
I love to build things and I had never designed and built a roof before.
We will also use it for storing gardening supplies and so forth.
I had a good time wielding my hammer on that roof!
If you want to see me in the process of building the roof,
please
click here!
It was clear to me that this was a perfect opportunity for a mural too, so I
designed the three walled sides (the side abutting the pool is semi-open with
lattice used for the siding) to be nice exterior plywood with 1 x 4 trim so that
each panel would sort of look like a framed painting. There will be a door
in one side too, so that side is split into two plywood panels.
So, we have a total of 4 plywood panels we can use as mural plus the door
which I will eventually build.
Two of the panels are about 4' x 6' and the side with the door gave us two
smaller panels-- one about 3' x 6' and one about 3.5' x 6'. So we had a lot
of square footage.
Here is Qait, our nine year old, in front of the
primed pool house.
It has been a lot of fun designing the murals and then painting
them. We have used acrylics and probably the biggest problem has been the
heat and sun. The acrylics dry very fast in the 90 - 100 degree summer heat
(no, we have not used extenders as of yet to delay drying time) and also
painting a true vertical panel with no slant can be very trying, especially
when we are trying to paint close to the ground. My panel has always been
in the direct sun. I generally paint in my running shorts with my shirt off
(I am brown as a nut as a result!) and I take a dip in the pool every two hours
or so to cool off. We can usually paint about 4 hours on a good day.
I started building the pool building in May by setting the 4 x 4 foundation
poles up. I had already run power out to the site last summer. The building was a
simple 4 x 4 pole like construction with a gravel floor around the pool pump.
I had a lot of fun framing everything out.
After the building was done,
I dug out around the pool and installed a nice sand and gravel walkway with
some large 2' x 2' pavers embedded in the gravel.
Then I built
a small
deck coming up to the pool so that the kids and us
old folk can get into the pool
easier.
Whew!
This was a lot of work, but stuff I like to do.
This took me up to mid June or so and then I primed everything with about
3 coats to get ready for the murals. So around early July all was done,
I was kind of burned out and I started teaching 2 intense summer courses
(a normal 15 week class in 6 weeks) which kept me busy! So we didn't start
the murals really until the teaching was done. This was about the beginning
of August.
So our mural painting has so far stretched out about 6 weeks.
Author: Dr. Peterson,
Mathematical Sciences,
Clemson University
Last Updated: May 2, 2001
petersj@ces.clemson.edu