**Since this post I did a bit of tinkering by adding a buzzard and a few other creatures, but this was pretty much the finished mural below.**
This week I added honeysuckle flowers, a dormouse and a half finished red admiral – approximately 3.5 hours in total. By which point two things happened, which has meant a temporary stop to mural works.
a) small person needed to move into his own room after having already been made to wait patiently for over two months (!) and
b) I need to press on with an exciting new piece of artwork for a wildlife charity that does great work for animals that I have a particular fondness for. (I will go into more detail when the artwork has been given the thumbs up!)
I believe the mural is not finished and I still have plenty of things I want to add to it. Without ‘giving away the ending’, essentials include completing: the red admiral; final piece of ‘unpainted’ wall that is the dipper in the stream; there is the ghost outline of a weasel or stoat – which I hope did not jinx the road traffic incident death of a real-life local stoat recently – very sad; and lastly the buzzard in flight that took me 2.5hrs to draw. I could stop after these four, but the wishlist includes: swallow, house martin, swift, garden cross spider (so small person will not be frightened of spiders), another butterfly species, possibly a dragonfly, and in the distance Devon Red cattle, Belted Galloways (I love their mint humbug look!), sheep, possible ponies. Then ideally, when all is finished, I would add two layers of varnish with UV protection to prevent fading/discolouration and minor paint scratches (small person would have to vacate the room for a while during this process to avoid fumes.) The grand total of time spent on the mural to date is approximately 67 hours, but obviously it will take a lot longer! I’ll see how I feel later, whether I just finish the four animals or add all the extras with sugar on top! I like to think the client is happy with the mural so far. He went to sleep fairly quickly for his first nap in the room (it helps make the room darker!) and has gazed at the details, but he does gaze into space sometimes too!
