Finally, after what seemed to be a million miniture brush strokes and layers of acrylic paint, the Panda mural is finished.
The mural began with a basic pencil sketch (what I refer to as the "possible") and lightly colored in with colored pencils. The next step was to wash the background with a sunset finish and then "place" the panda in a comfy spot.
This is where the millions of brush strokes came into play. I wanted to make the panda look realistic by showing his individual hairs on his entire body. The trick was to be sure I was overlapping the colors at the right time in the right direction.
In the picture below, you can see the detail of these hairs for his ears.
At this point, I decided this guy needed more than just a sunset, but some plants to choose from for lunch. I began washing the background with some green tones and painted in a few plants. I also added in more orange tones to the yellow sky.
With his paws appearing to be clinging to something, I added a few plants coming out from underneath his paws.
I didn't like the results of the first attempt for the plants that we coming out of his mouth, so with some black paint I "erased" them and would eventually paint in some new ones. Notice there are more plants in the foreground on the right as well.
Originally, there were going to be chinese symbols on the left hand side of the painting, but after discussing the idea, we settled on the idea of more plants. So I picked up my green paints again . . .
Something still wasn't right. The top left hand side was missing something, but something too dramatic might take away from the main focus of the painting - the panda. The missing piece was cranes flying overhead far in the background with the sunset shining on their wings.
With a few more plants on the left in the foreground, the mural is "finished" (although none of my work is ever finished in my eyes).
