No, NO! Bad Thunderstorm!!!!!!

I really must make this quick, but I can't leave without posting about my most be-yoo-ti-mous backdrop yet. I took more time and care than usual with this one---hmmmm, maybe that's why it turned out so well...It was completed over the course of two hot, hurried days, with one thunderstorm interruption.

I started by masking out my mountains with brown paper, something I've never bothered with before. It worked well, and I'll definitely do it again---the finished product is worth the extra time.

 
 I went through the same process with the dark green foothills, but got busy painting it and forgot to photograph it. The sky was done free-hand with a can of blue spray paint. I painted the green grass with a brush instead of spray paint, and that went pretty well. It helped that the paint was thin and spread on the fabric easily.

Then I added details along the stream with my brush.

All this time, I was casting worried glances over my shoulder. There was a forecast of afternoon thunderstorms, and around 6:00  this was what the sky looked like in the west.

I waited until the last possible minute, partly to give the paint longer to dry, and partly hoping it would pass to the north of us. Alas, it was not to be. Caleb and I stripped the backdrop off moments before the storm hit.

The weather forecast said the storm carried 50 mph winds. I'm not sure we got quite to that, but it was pretty intense for a little while. Try painting in THAT!

 After the storm passed, we were treated to a beautiful sunset, but it was too wet to paint more that night.

The next morning, I was up with the chickens---cranky, sleepy, sore chickens. I got the backdrop tacked back up and started to work on the large white spot still left to do. My birch forest. Oh, by the way. If you're ever pressed for time, don't paint a birch forest.

I painted some bushes in the foreground with my brush and spray painted in a hazy background for my tree trunks. Those bushes would have had a grizzly bear in them if I'd had time.

Pout.

Then I painted in some white tree trunks for the foreground and watered down some gray for ghostly trunks disappearing into the forest. The black patches were easy to do---I just had to brush some black paint randomly on the trunks.

When I was  all finished, I decided I needed it darker between the trunks, so I had to go back and brush some VERY watered down dark paint in between.

No art project of mine will EVER be completed without....

MONSTER HANDS!!!!!!!!!!!

Sigh. I could have done much more, but I simply ran out of time. It was lots of fun,though, and I can't wait to see it all hung up at campmeeting. Until then, here is a very bad picture to give you an idea of what the whole thing looks like.

It was windy, OK?