You get a lot of exercise climbing up and down those ladders and scaffolds, which would be a great way to burn calories if it didn’ t make you so hungry. Culminating in the inevitable result of eating too much junk food and flopping down when you get home, too tired to hit the gym and get some exercise. You’ re more likely to gain weight than lose it.
Then there’ s the weather.
The window of opportunity for painting outdoor murals is cruel and brief. First, you can’ t paint in the winter. Even if you’ re tough enough to brave the cold, your paint won’ t stick to an icy surface; and if it freezes before it dries, it will surely peel when the temperature gets above freezing.
There are plenty of pleasant days to paint in the spring, but there are also a lot of rainy days. You can keep yourself dry with a raincoat and hat, but you can’ t paint on a wet wall. It’ s hard to maintain a consistent schedule when you never know for sure whether tomorrow will be rainy and sunny, but you do often learn how unreliable weather reports can be. Painting in autumn has the same unpredictability as painting in spring, but with a little more
wind, and the pressure of having to get the job done before winter.
That leaves summer as the only practical time of year to paint outdoor murals. Summer means heat, sunburn, sweat, and bugs. But at least it doesn’ t rain so much and the paint won’ t freeze.
Speaking of paint, the kind of paint most practical for mural painting, exterior flat latex, is made for contractors, not artists. The colors have completely different names. The art supply industry has done remarkably well at standardizing the names of their colors, to the point where one brand’ s cadmium red is virtually indistinguishable from another’ s. But just try to find“ cadmium red” among the swatches at a house paint store. The closest thing they have to that color may be called“ dragon’ s blood” or“ harbor sunset.”
Not to mention that house paint is messy, gloppy, uncontrollable stuff. It’ s easier to manage in quart cans than gallon cans, but if you try to buy more than one quart at a time, the clerk won’ t sell it to you because two quarts of house paint cost more than one gallon.
Drawing up a list of necessary colors and quantities is hard enough when the paint is sold by the ounce, like the paint in art supply stores; but having to decide how many gallons you may need is maddeningly imprecise.
Also, you’ ll need help. Much of the work, like pulling chalk line, can’ t be done by just one pair of hands, and much of the simpler work, like rolling out flat colors, can be done while you’ re being creative. Volunteers are easy to find, but if you’ re going to be well paid, it’ s only fair to cut them in on it, which means you’ ll have to work out how much paid assistance you can afford.
At the beginning of a mural, assistants can speed things up considerably, and at the end they can help wrap it all up. But in between, the hardest part of having assistants can be giving them something to do. I found that out when I did a mural outside a bar. I was about to go home when I saw I had a flat tire. I could have fixed it myself, but I thought I’ d duck my head in the bar and ask if anyone could give me a hand. To my surprise, four men got up.
I didn’ t do any of the work. One man used the lug wrench to lower the spare tire while another put the jack in place and turned it as high as it could go without the jack handle, which was also the lug wrench. After that, it was a one-man operation. That one man jacked up the wheel, pried off the hubcap, loosened the nuts, and reversed the process with the spare tire. We had five men, including me, but four of us just stood with nothing to do, because there wasn’ t much more than one person could do.
Up until then, I wished I had an assistant. That experience made me realize, I could end up wasting a lot of money, because only I could do most of that work in the end anyway.
When I’ m high up a ladder on an 80-degree August day, spreading paint with a three-inch wide brush as passersby stand around and try to start a conversation with me, I wonder how I got into this business. It was practically by accident.
36 ART CHOWDER MAGAZINE