Southeast Whitesburg Mural--23 A skeleton

The students in our Radiography program provided me with some great photographs to use as inspiration and models in the mural. One that tickled my fancy was a grouping of students and their buddy Mr. Skeleton. [Their professor, my friend Astor Halcomb was also in the photo, but I left him out -- sorry Astor!]. As you can see above, the faces are only partially complete. Missing are the fine details, especially of eyes and mouths. Most of Mr. Skeleton is also missing -- since titanium white is one of the most opaque pigments an acrylic painter has to work with, it works best to paint the details of the skeleton on top, after most of the work on the students is complete.

While the various stages of face painting dried in between steps, I worked on the clothing, arms and tools of the students I painted yesterday. Hands are NOT my forte. I have painted great hands -- I did an entire "portrait" one time in college that was just of the hands of my friend Doug DuPriest (he had really aristocratic looking hands). But it took me some twelve hours of work just to paint those hands. Since I have only a few minutes to do hands, I'm not doing as well with them as I would like. Perhaps by the time I finish the mural, I will improve a bit.

Here is an overview of the whole wall (I haven't given one in a couple of days). As you can see, I've completed about one-third of the bottom portion of the mural.