Mural progress.

Well, I took a bit of a risk today, and I'm not sure if I'm going to regret it or not. See, the wall in my kitchen has been driving me crazy. It's all blocked out, and there has been no progress since then. I've had this nagging feeling that it isn't finished, which, as my mom pointed out, has probably been increasing my stress level. Now I know this project is not going to be finished quicklym, but progress is progress, so Friday, I went down to the hardware store and bought myself four quarts of paint: two shades of grey and two shades of gold.

This morning, I was determined to get started and just do a little painting. Now the word "little" is key because I know that painting can be hazardous for pregnant women. So I determined ahead of time that I was only going to paint for an hour. I chose paints with the smallest amount of fumes. I opened all the windows in the house, I turned on a fan, and I even wore a respirator.

So I got all my painting stuff out, mixed myself some colors, and started painting.

The first thing I discovered was that I was going to need to get some smaller brushes. Trees have a lot of small and intricate parts that a 1/4 inch brush is not going to handle. This is the main tree in the back corner. The branches will extend farther than they do at the moment, but that is exactly where a smaller brush would have come in handy.

The second thing I discovered is that dark is really dark. Check out my background trees for this corner. Really dark and kinda creepy. I want the trailing twigs. They're one of the reasons I love paper birches so much. At the moment, they look like claws, and this whole thing looks like a Halloween setting. Not quite what I had in mind. I'm going to try to brighten up the middle of their trunks, and of course, when they have shading and details, they'll look more realistic.About that time, I decided that I had painted enough. I was sick of the respirator, and I was feeling a little sick to my stomach. So I put away my paints and cleaned out my brushes on the middle tree. What do you think? If the branches were longer and the leaves were in place, it could be a pretty good birch tree. It doesn't look quite that good close up, but I've been painting with broad brushes, so I don't really expect any differently.

Next step will be to put some life into those background trees and decide how I want to handle the background colors. Either the blue needs to come down a lot farther (which will get blue smudges on my trees, or I need to find a plausible background green or gold that can look like leaves in autumn. I think I'm going to do as much as possible to this side before I start on the other side. Sort of a learn from my mistakes sort of a thing. Today I learned that backgrounds should come first, before sketching even. I also learned that I can put together a pretty good birch tree.

But how much painting should I be doing? Once a week? How much trouble am I causing myself for my piece of mind regarding this mural? The nurses said that a little bit of painting was fine, and that's exactly what I did, a little bit. But now I'm so nervous. I wish I could see what's going on inside of me. I'd like to keep painting. Mom is right. I feel much better when I'm on my way toward getting something done. I don't feel good thinking about possible risks to my child. Maybe I should just call my doctor. I think I'll do that.