Painting a big wall

I’ve been putting in quite a few hours over at my daughters’ school painting a bare concrete retaining wall and concrete shack (which used to house a boiler) to match the stonework of the school building.  It’s about 675 square feet, so it’s far and away the biggest “canvas” I’ve had to work on.

I’ve done my best to keep the budget low, so in purchasing the exterior latex paint I’m trying to work with the fewest number of colors possible.  I have white, black, a blue-gray, and a yellowish orange.  It’s been a challenge.  As of the night before last, I finally got all the fake stones painted in with at least one coat of paint.  I’ve been altering my technique and experimenting as I go, so I feel like I’m getting better…and right when I got to the last few stones I feel like I figured out what I was doing. I wish I knew when I started what I know now!  But I think I can pull it all together.

Now I’m going back over it all, altering colors, shading, making it more uniform, and looking for ways to put in a sense of shadow and highlight.  I was putting in shadows last night, but it was getting so dark that I couldn’t accurately see what I was doing.