Hi Julie...man, sounds like safety mike may have fallen from scaffolding at one point in time...but, yes, always pay attention to your surroundings...virtigo tends to take place up there when your consentrating on your above image, more often than not...
I have a tip to share with you...for image placement, since you are upside down basically, it's hard sometimes to take too much time standing back to check perspective, so...I sometimes enlarge my own artwork onto tracing paper with an opaque projector (saving time), then procede to trace its backside with a graphite pencil (against a surface your not concerned with marking up)...then when you tape it into position (graphite side against surface)...draw it out again on the original sketched side (using a harder lead) and the graphite will transfer to your chosen layout area in a light transfer. I like to then immediately darken some lines after removal of the paper "template"...while the design is fresh in your mind. Sounds like many steps, but it saves you from getting up and down from the scaffold to check your prospectives. Then, the paint I choose to use for color layout depends on the size of the area...artist acrylic/oil tubes (a thicker consistency reducing drips in your face) or a latex paint (Ie. sherwin williams/benjamin-moore...quarts) with an added medium to build the body of the paint up...avoiding drips again. Hope this helped. Enjoy creating, we are blessed with this gift!
Cindy