A storm of posts! Sorry.
I just want to celebrate Xavier’s new efforts in pedaling… on 2 wheels! Congrats to my ‘Zazoo’!

A week and a half ago, we went to the “Rendez-vous des Coureurs des Bois”, in Pointe-du-Lac. It is an event that evokes the colonization, where participants dress in period clothing and “camp” old style in the Antoine-Gauthier park.

We went to see a battle simulation on the St.Lawrence shore… and took pictures, of course. An interesting activity!

I already said that Xavier took up baseball, but I didn’t have pictures. We have corrected this situation!

You can’t see on the pictures, but the back of his t-shirt states “Xavier 95″. Hehe!

I had a little less ambition for Xavier’s (almost 4!) mural, because he was already living in his room when I painted it, so I didn’t have the luxury of working at night after his bedtime — and probably because I didn’t wish to invest the same amount of time in the project, too!

Just like Orléane’s mural, I used the wall’s initial colour for the background and used leftover latex paint for some colour mixes, in addition to acrylic paint. (And, yes, I mixed latex and acrylic at some point! I don’t know if there’s a rule against this, but it worked: the paint texture wasn’t ideal, but it was still serviceable.)

So here is my basic illustration:

I used whales/fish illustration from the web as models for putting together my own composition while correcting the colours. Yes, yes, the “water” is green, but since the room’s sky is already a dark blue — with silver sprinkles in the paint, for stars — I wanted to keep the green. It also allows the blue fish to pop out a little better.

I traced a grid on the illustration, because I had used that technique to reproduce Orly’s forest on her wall but, so Xavier’s dunes would look more natural, I started by tracing these, then I reproduced each fish “by eye”, about at the right spot.

I didn’t take a picture before starting, so we’re jumping directly to the first step: sea bottom dunes.

I started with the whales at the back, then. I tried to give them a green tint (like the “water”), so they would look farther — otherwise their proportions would squish the other fish! It worked a little better for the humpback than the killer whales, but oh well…

A few hours (and a few days) later, other fish, plants and mammals appeared.

I didn’t count how many hours I put in, but it really didn’t take so long: maybe 4 to 6 blocks of 2 hours. Here is the final picture again, with the addition of the eyes, a turtle, a school of fish — and a few children!

To strengthen the juxtaposition of the mural under the sea and the starry sky, a few boats are sailing on the shelf that stretches between them. The duvet full of fish came from Ikea a few years back, and the big turtle a was gift from auntie Karine. Xavier loves his sea and sky room!

(I really don’t have all that much experience, but if you have questions about the process, leave them in the blog comments and I’ll answer from my experience.)

Today we had lunch at Madrid, on the highway 20. We ate a yummy poutine, but in fact we spent more time outside than inside the restaurant, because…

THERE WERE DINOS ALL AROUND! w00t, w00t!
Lol, Xavier was delighted…

Aaaaaaahhhhh…!!

And Big Foots…

No, no, they weren’t REAL dinosaurs…

But they were all kinds of awesome anyway!