Ellie on the Garage

The Ellie on my Garage
June 29, 2015

I mentioned I have an elephant, almost life-size, painted on my garage. I bought my house in 2012, after a divorce. I was ready to really make the place mine and express myself through my home, my garden and this crazy idea of painting an elephant on the garage. The garage is on a alley and the big wall of the garage faces the back of my house in my backyard.

I was really nervous about it. I wasn't sure I could do it. The neighbors would see it. What if it was a disaster. I'd never painted before and I'd certainly never painted anything this big. I'm a physical therapist and work with lots of wise and creative older women. I was speaking to one of my patients about this idea and she encouraged me, and brilliantly solved the problem of how to paint something giant when you are right on top of it. She loaned me an overhead projector. It worked beautifully.

I made an elephant drawing on acetate paper and projected it up on the garage at night- got it where I wanted it and traced the shape on the garage. Voila!

Once I got into it I had a blast painting. I just picked out a bunch of house paints in the smallest quantity I could and went to work. I worked with about 7 paint colors total.

One day I was painting and firemen came into the backyard. I had been making hummingbird food on the stove and forgot about it. I had my iPod ear buds in and never heard the alarm going off in the house. The sugar water on the stove burned down to nothing and there was smoke everywhere but luckily no fire.

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