Southeast Whitesburg Mural--38 Ducks and flowers

This was such a different kind of painting day. All the people are done, every single one of them. So today I painted ducks and flowers.

The woman (Penny Ritter) whose vision inspired our college campus used to sit across the road from the old Coca-Cola bottling plant, watching the ducks and dreaming of a day when there would be college students feeding the ducks. So below the plaque (carefully protected behind painters tape and cardboard) I have placed a mother duck and two ducklings.


Then I needed to deal with all the rest of the empty space created by having to place the plaque in from the edge of the wall by some ten inches. I decided to use several types of blue/purple flowers, since the Kentucky Community and Technical College System (KCTCS) colors are a deep blue and gold. Violets do grow in places on the lawn that surrounds the college, although the photos I used for inspiration come from my own yard.

The irises are one of the first things you see in the spring when you approach the administration building and the Belinda Mason Building -- although they actually belong to Dr. Kathleen Caizzi who lives next door to the college. There are more irises to be painted. Some that are a white edged in very deep purple-blue. Also, the only flowers that I have any experience painting are irises; although all my iris painting experience is with water colors which work very differently from acrylics.

Later this week I will be adding morning glory vines and deep blue flowers climbing up the side of the plaque and across the top. Unfortunately, all the construction and renovations over the past eight years have obliterated the morning glories that used to exist on campus. So I have borrowed several photos off the web to provide a guide for how to portray these lovely flowers.

Below you can see first the area around the plaque -- safely hidden and protected from paint splatters by the cardboard. [After the official unveiling September 23, I will take photos for my blog that show the plaque in place]. This is what I worked on today, filling in all the blank white spaces, which included the drive in front of the administration building, the blouse, arms and computer of Pricie Young at bottom right, and the ducks and flowers. Below that is an overview of the whole thing -- almost finished!