Up-Front Work
In the last post of the design series, I mentioned that we needed to paint the name panels with automotive base coat/ clear coat. On June 28 - 30 we drove down to Kewanee, IL to do the name panel painting. My co-leader Ted Turner and I worked from 9am Saturday morning until 3am Sunday morning to accomplish this task!
28 feet of contour cut name panels are now painted in four color convex prismatic lettering. Here is a picture of the layout process for that stage of the project.
Maquette
Each year, the Walldog project leaders are asked to produce a maquette of their mural design, which is then sold at a charity auction during the event. In the initial stages of this project, I was hoping to do a hand drawn presentation of our design. As things progressed, and the reality of time management set in, I changed the maquette to a digitally printed piece. I ended up doing a scaled presentation with contour cut raised artwork. The piece below is mounted in an aluminum frame and the protective plastic cover is still on the plexi-glass. The overall size is 24" tall by 44" wide.
I also did a small oil painting to donate, just to see if I remember how to paint. This painting is 18" x 24" oil on canvas. It is of Roger at a flat track race, when he was riding with the National Champion number 1 on his bike.
Equipment
Since we had to do the additional step of painting base coat/clear coat, additional equipment was required. I have a set of spray guns which I only use for automotive paint. I have a separate set of spray guns that I use with Nova Colors Artist Acrylic paint.
We are also doing some of the installation of name panels, contour cut flags and the aluminum support frames that hold them all up. So we also need to pack the additional equipment that is required for all of those processes.
Then there is the "normal" mural gear that we usually bring to an event. Brushes, projectors, projector stands, lights, straight edges, camera gear, and on it goes.
If you are interested in learning more about the specific types of equipment we use, drop me a note in the comment section, and I'll get back to you.
Needless to say, We have a ton of equipment being loaded up for the Roger Reiman Mural project.
Reference Images
Once the images are traced onto the walls, and we are ready to start painting, we need to have printed reference images, to hand off to each artist who is helping on the wall. A high-resolution image mounted on a fairly rigid stock will work out well. Here are a few of the images I have produced for our project.
See you there
Well, tomorrow morning is the day we load up and head to Kewanee, IL for the 20th year of Walldog mural painting and our very special project. We have put in a solid year of planning and work to get to this point. It's time to go painting. Wish us well, and we hope to see you all there.
