Mail Pouch Barn #1

here are pictures of a project i finished up in '07 that is pretty important to me. my first Mail Pouch (MP) barn i painted for my Mom & Dad on their shed in the backyard. my Dad fought with cancer long enough to see the shed, but passed away shortly after. me, him and my Mom would always take road trips and he'd point out every MP barn we'd see along the way. so i thought it would be nice if they could wake up every morning, and see one in the back yard...

i patterned it after these barns:

i wasn't into taking a bunch of pics back then, but managed to snap a few of my progress here and there.

stool, table, drafted print-out that i made (pic below), paint & supplies

here are the dimensions i drew up. i did this by finding a straight-on image of an existing MP barn online... right clicking on the image and selecting "copy"... opening AutoCAD, and "pasting" the image into a workspace... tracing out the letters...

then pulling the trace off of the image, cleaning it up, and sizing it up to scale... then dimensioning the letters i traced. sounds difficult, but it's harder to do then to explain:

drop shadow added:

i later read in this book (The Barn Painter) that Harley Warrick would start all his barns with the letter "H" and work his way out then down. kinda cool that his initials were H.E.W., no?

and here she is all finished up... with rays of sun shining down from the heavens :-)

my Dad saw and enjoyed this painting for a short time, but passed before he could see all of my other DIYs. but with every stitch, and every cut, and every new idea, i keep him in my heart and in my thoughts. him and my Mom have always been big fans of my work, no matter what it was/is. my Mom will give me some good ideas from time to time, but don't tell her that, she'll take credit for the whole finished product ;-)

me and my dad out crabbing/fishing:

me and my ma checkin' out a game:

(those two knuckleheads were married for 40+ years, and together for about 50)