A promising start

I got over my fear of messing up our freshly painted walls and finally got started. The semi-gloss has other ideas, however, and is proving its effectiveness. It would seem that it's so resistant to marking that it is nearly impossible to paint over top of it. But I'm stubborn and wouldn't let a little thing like that stop me. I used the brown right out of the can and just slapped it on for coat number one. Without any other tones, it looked so flat. The green was still visible through the brown and the brush strokes were there (a symptom of painting onto the glossy wall). On the other hand, it was easy to wipe away mistakes quickly.

An hour of watching paint dry (actually, of watching TV downstairs) and I was back up for a second coat. This time, I mixed the brown with beiges and grays, to give it more depth. The second coat also created much better coverage. I'm not sure if this picture captures the difference between using one color versus several - the top branch and trunk already got the layered treatment, but the bottom branch has not - it looks much more boring and 2-dimensional.

I decided to hold off on getting on a ladder to do the green foliage, since I was home along, so I turned next to Mr. Parrot. I had to do the same double coat, slapping on the primary colors once for coverage (and, since I had bits of white and gray on Ms. Giraffe on the right, you'll see I put down the first layer of her eye and tongue, making for a rather ghostly scene).

Another hour or so and then it was time for some textured feathers. You can see that I added in some orange, tinted some with white, added red to the blue and vice versa. Nothing particularly crazy, no shadowing or realistic texture, but I think it's a good compromise for a cartoonish look.

I was wrapping up the parrot when D came home to admire my work. He also suggested something incredibly obvious and yet so ingenious - if one coat wasn't adhering to the paint, why not prime first? And so I present to you my primed giraffe. That was where I called it quits for the day, so I don't know if it will help. But after seeing how poorly the yellow, more than any other color, covered up the green, even two yellow coats after priming will be better than what I would have faced without the white background.

(Don't look too closely at the fabric in the window - that's for the next post. I know, I know - "don't look" is a surefire way to make you look, even if you didn't look at it the first time.)