Scaling Up to the Largest Cheezer

Once we were done working with John on the plans, I found another outlet for my artistic side.  It all started with a 8'x4' sheet of pine, the largest one I could get at Home Depot.  It was so big, I had to hold it with one hand through the moonroof on the Escape to to keep it from sliding off of the roof.

Once I got it home & into the living room, it was time to draw it to scale.  To achieve this, I learned in Art II in 10th grade, that you draw a grid on a small paper & then calculate it to a larger size.  (For example: 1 inch on paper is equal to 1 foot on a large piece of wood).  You grab a yardstick or T-square & draw out your squares:

I did this on an old cardboard printout from one of Kate's Birthday Bar Crawls.  I used that as a model so I knew where I needed to cutout the outline of "Sammy" our logo.  I also found it easier to work without a shirt on in September, one of our warmest months in San Diego.

Next, I fired up my handheld jigsaw, a used Ryobi model that I bought with a power sander at a yard sale in OB years ago for under $20.  

"What are you cutting out there?" Kate asked me out in the yard.

"I can't talk right now," I told her.  "One wrong move & this board turns into firewood & I have to start over."

She took the hint & I was able to pull it off.  After I sanded down some jagged edges & tight corners, I primed & painted it white.  My new canvas looked like this:

Well, this photo is actually after I drew in all of my line in pencil, carefully using my square grid to keep things in proportion.  In all my drawing experiences since middle school, there's nothing worse than drawing something great but it's off center or you run out of paper to finish it.  That's what's so great about the grid- it keeps you in the right territory.

Once the pencil drawing & erasing errant grid lines is done, it was time to paint.  Dottie from OB Hardware helped me pick out some good colors to match our logo.  I believe it was a simple Royal Blue for the words & Yellow Sun for the actual melted cheese part (that's the same color as the back menu wall in our shop today).  A lot of the browns & tans I mixed up at home with leftover paints I had lying around.

I did three coats on each color & there were 7 colors in all.  By now it was late October, so I had to wear an A-shirt to be comfortable, but it took just under two months working in my spare time at home.  I think it turned out pretty well.  And, Dottie helped me pick out some good outdoor paint, because it still looks the same today hanging high above our shop's entrance.