Adding colour

After I came home from painting the mural with my daughter on Monday, I kept thinking of things we could have done differently. When I woke up the next morning, I could tell my daughter had been thinking about it too.

Daughter: Know what we should do?
Me: Buy a can of yellow paint.
Daughter: Exactly!
Me: That way, we could make green.
Daughter: And I want to add more clouds.
Me: Maybe we need red too.
Daughter: I could make kind of a pinkish glow around the clouds.
Me: And I could make purple.
Daughter: Purple?
Me: Remember those huge waterlily pond paintings we saw in Famous European City? If you looked close, the water had all kinds of colours in it.
Daughter: Well, we're definitely in the same category as Claude Monet.
Me: Well, we should at least have the whole palette.

As we drove to her apartment this morning, we discussed our plans for the second round of painting.

Me: I want to work on the water and the shoreline. Make it more interesting.
Daughter: Interesting? Do you mean weird?
Daughter: I don't want it to be weird.
Me: What's wrong with weird?
Daughter: It's a wall mural.

As we began to paint, someone in the apartment above turned on some loud music. Some song I didn't recognize, although my daughter did.

Daughter: Oh, that must be Guy Upstairs.
Me: Do you have his cell phone number?
Daughter: What?
Me: We could make a request. Like ... some kind of music that I would like.
Daughter: I don't know him that well.
Daughter: And I doubt he's got any Joni Mitchell.

Me: Hey, too bad we know nothing about perspective.
Daughter: Yeah, the footsteps on the beach are life-size.
Me: And the sailboat is like four inches high.
Daughter: What do you think I should do with the clouds?
Me: Well, I'd get rid of that long one. It's way too phallic.
Daughter: I'll cut it in half.
Me: I'm adding purple to the waves. And some white spray.
Daughter: What about this?
Me: Make the clouds overlap.

Daughter: Why are you painting over the sailboat?
Me: I have to make a new one. There's a wind now, and it needs to be heeled over.
Daughter: Why do you keep making those noises?
Me: It's the sound of waves crashing. To keep me in the mood.
Daughter: The sun is setting over here.
Me: Oh, I like the pink.
Daughter: What's the dark blob?
Me: It's a rock. I'm adding some rocks. Otherwise, it doesn't make sense that the waves are crashing.
Daughter: Hey, this is looking good.
Me: For our first mural, it's not bad at all.
Me: Maybe instead of going to grad school, you should go into business with me. We could be mural artists.
Daughter: And go around painting murals for college students?
Me: Yep. This is fun. I'll quit my job, and we can paint murals for a living.
Daughter: That sounds like a realistic plan.



Here's the mural, or at least, the left side of it. Unfortunately, when I uploaded the photo to Flickr, the colours on the mural ended up getting washed out, although the quilt and pillowcases stayed bright. Boy in Black looked at the photo and said, "It looks like an ad for bedsheets."

Like any great work of art, the mural really has to be seen in person.