Day 1 at the Day Care Center

Sorry I have been absent from this blog all week. I’ve been pulling together a few proposals, nudging paint contractors to hurry up and finish walls, and working on sketches, masks and stencils for this Day Care Center job.

One room was finally ready for me today. This room will be an indoor playroom and is located in a basement with no windows. I am painting 1 window on each of the 4 walls. Each window will have the same view, but the seasons will change from Winter, Spring, Summer to Fall. Because I knew my time would be limited at this job… it’s slated to open in about a week, I did a lot of prep work in my studio. I made this window stencil on some heavy paper stock and reinforced the window panes with blue tape. I will be adding the framework later, as well as a valance. To start, I decided it would be more efficient to paint the scenes in the window panes.

This is very hard to see, but I have the scenes for each pane already sketched out on paper, sized to fit right in the frames. I lay in my background colors first, let dry… which proved to be a bit of a problem today. Normally, I would just hit it with a blow dryer to speed things up, but the outlets are not connected yet. There were 2 long extension cords hooked to a generator, but the carpenter was using one and the carpet guys the other. So, once the background color dried, I taped up a sheet of transfer paper, then my sketch, and traced over my lines.

I have all my miscellaneous masks and stencils taped to a wall nearby. 🙂

Today I was able to complete 2 1/2 of the 4 window scenes. The carpet guys kept the doors open most of the day, so I was so cold by the end of the day that I forgot to take more pictures. Luckily, they finished, so the doors should stay shut tomorrow when I hope to complete these windows. I will post those pics Monday before I return to start another room in this Day Care Center.