Into the Woods (Part 1)

It all started innocently enough early last summer, 2017. My wife Lynne, Executive Director of the Treehouse Children’s Museum had a exhibit painting job for me, if I wanted it. Well sure, painting, money, my two favorite things. It was a rather large space that she was going to fill with a forest called a Walk in the Woods. Loosely based on several children’s books (Baby Bear series) written and illustrated by Ashley Wolff, a good friend of ours. Just to see if it was at all possible, would I do a scale model first? I have always enjoyed doing models of almost anything, so I set out with measurements and floor plans and built the model out of foam core, mat board and Styrofoam. It turned out quite well, exquisitely painted, down to the last detail, animals, plants, trees, walls of a forest in all the four seasons, a beaver pond, and a large cave for mama bear and her cub. Little did I realize that at that scale, 1 foot to 1/2 inch, those tiny trees on the model would later become quite daunting to paint. The director and exhibit team reviewed the model and after some changes and adjustments the exhibit proposal was approved. At the end of September, the existing exhibits were removed, the area fenced off and I brought in my painting equipment and many, many gallons of paint. Looking around at the vast area to fill, I realized that it just wasn’t going to be enough. Ashley arrived for a week of hectic illustrating of the many animal cutouts, getting the majority of them started and quite a few finished. I settled in for good two months of off and on work, finishing up the critters and making a number of new ones to fill in the forest spaces. Slowly, through November and December wall cutouts were put up and primed and based in with basic colors, light green for spring, darker green for summer and fall fading into yellow for autumn and dark blue for a cold winters night. The walls around the cave were marked out with the winter constellations and fiber optic lines were run for the stars shinning in the night sky. By January 1st, I was ready to begin painting in the trees. For a dimensional effect, more cutouts were made for the foreground bushes and such, all of which had to be primed, based and painted. With my electric lift I was able to raise myself up and down the 11 foot tall walls and roll back and forth on the 15 foot long wall spaces. It made it much easier then climbing up and down and moving ladders every time I changed position. Tree trunks and branches were first, then filling in background color and moving forward in value and tone. Each leaf had to be painted in and then applied a second coat to cover the background. Then each leaf was detailed with veins, trunks detailed and foreground shrubs and trees included. January faded into a cold February and the summer wall was finally finished first, due to having to be ready to accommodate the building of the beaver pond. Spring was painted and autumn started, Ashley was scheduled to arrive in early March to help with the work. Then my father died suddenly, coming back to his house after getting the mail. I stopped work, devastated. (Below, the model of the exhibit and early views of the trees and animals with Ashley and I.)

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