Southeast Whitesburg Mural--06 Sky

Yesterday (Tuesday June 23) was the day for getting the sky laid in for the entire mural. This turned out to be much harder than anticipated.



I'd never painted such a large area in one color or hue before. It took me a while before I got the hang of mixing up enough paint at one time. Moreover, while I wanted consistency across the entire wall, I didn't want one solid flat color or hue. I wanted a sky that looked like a day with thin clouds. So that meant that I had to have a range of values (tints and shades) that remained consist across the entire wall.

A brief lesson in terminology for the non-painters in the audience. A "hue" is the basic colors of the color wheel -- yellow, blue, red, green, orange, purple and other combinations of those basic colors. "Value" refers to variations on the basic hues accomplished by adding white pigment for "tints" or black pigment for "shades." Pink is a tint of red, created by adding white. Mid-night blue is a shade of blue created by adding black. The third variation in color (after hue and value) is "intensity" which refers to the clarity of the color. Intensity is modified by adding the "complement" of a color -- the color opposite it on the color wheel. Orange is the opposite of Blue, so one can dull or gray the intensity of blue by adding orange. Green is the opposite of Red, so one can dull the intensity of red by adding green.

Adding to the difficulty of the project was the necessity of stopping, climbing down from the scaffolding, releasing the wheels and moving it, locking the wheels and climbing back up. It took moving the scaffold to four different locations to complete the entire sky.

The Color Wheel from The Color Wheel Company. All other photos by sgreerpitt.