My eldest daughter was in a play this summer, Peter Pan!  All parents were asked to volunteer some of their time to help out with the production.  By the time I got to voluneering, painting sets was what was left.  When I thought of painting sets I was picturing painting chairs or something like that.  But what they really wanted was a tent for the indians, a rock for Mermaid Lagoon, and the nursery window… my favorite.

I haven’t painted anything large in more years than I’d like to count, so I can not begin to tell you how much fun I had doing this!

I love the trial and error that seems to happen when I paint and draw.  Maybe others have their technique so well refined that they don’t have this experience… but I kind of feel like a kid experimenting.  Every time.

I  blocked off the window frame with masking tape and roughed in the sky and the buildings.  I was thinking to just do silhouettes  for the buildings and roof tops, but they just seemed to get lost in the dark sky.  I tried surrounding the buildings with fog to make them stand out more and when I could see that it was still hard to make them out I tried adding some more highlights to the buildings.  It still didn’t really pop, especially from a distance. And the cold bluish highlights gave the whole thing a decidedly “haunted house” look instead of warm and fuzzy kids’ story book.  So I added in the warm golden highlights and contrasted it with a colder tone blue to make it stand out.

The last picture is of the faux wood paneling that I painted in later on.  I only got a chance to take a picture of it during the performance… So the image is a little crummy… but just to get an idea…