New Project

My first acrylic painting!

 We have several large blank walls on our back porch that we would like to lighten up and decorate. 

Wayne has been asking me for several years to paint a mural on a wall in our home.

Never having worked that large, or worked with acrylic paint, I was too scared to start in on a wall somewhere in our house!

When Wayne brought home this fence panel, that he bought at an estate sale, I decided to give it a try.  Wayne and I had fallen in love with Italy, so we decided on an Italian farm scene taken from one of my photos.  We plan to hang it above the table.

 The panel is 5' 9" by 4' 8" after he cut the points off the top.  We laid it on my work table and it overlaps both ends!  First I primed the wood with gesso.  I did my drawing on tracing paper that I had taped end to end,  then transferred my drawing onto the wood. 

I started first with the sky......

Then added the foreground......

Then the mountains.....

The trees and foliage.....

The barn.....

And finally, the house.....

I have been taking photos from as far above my painting as I can so I can see it from a distance.  It is difficult to paint as it is laying flat.  I will try to prop it up and live with it for a few days.  Then I will seal it with a spray sealer.  I can see some things I need to tweak as I sit here writing this.  I changed a few things to add everything we saw in Italy.  The trees in the distance to the left were not olive trees.  I tried to gray them down to look like a grove of olive trees.  The tall Poplars were not in the picture, so I added them.  Like Bob Ross used to say, it's my world, I can add trees where I want them!  Poplar trees were a very common site so I wanted to include them.  

I am not sure what I want to do with the border.  I may try to darken it.  I am open to suggestions!