Anatomy of a Mural – Painting Day 1

It is now 9:00 Saturday night. At 9 a.m. this morning I started painting this mural.

Those two facts could be the sign of a highly dedicated businesswoman.

Or maybe the sign of someone who needs to get a life.

I’m just sayin’ . . .

In case you missed my post with the mural rendering, here’s a picture of the rotunda – round room – where I’m painting.

It’s kind of hard to tell it’s round from this perspective, but round it is – which explains why it looks like I painted on a curve in the pictures.

This was my ‘green’ test patch for the hills. I thought you’d be able to see the chalk lines, but they don’t show very well here.

The green blocked in. I used about 3 shades, applied them with a foam roller and then ‘scrubbed’ them in with an old paintbrush because the wall is knockdown texture.

In case you’re wondering, that’s a 5’ ladder, which means I did about 20 stairmaster workouts today alone.

Remember when I told you how to ‘create’ hills with paint? Well, this is proof that I actually do paint the way I teach.

I’m sure there are other ways to paint hills, but this works for me – and it’ll work for you too. Promise!

You’re probably thinking that this picture looks just like the other one above it. It’s not. There’s highlighting on the hills – buttercream yellow, to be precise.

Yes, it’s subtle, but I think it’s necessary – not that the clients or any of their guests will be climbing 9 or 10 feet high to see whether or not there’s highlighting on the hills.

It just adds another dimension to the overall mural.

Super simple trees. Pine, oak & sycamore – or at least that’s what they’re supposed to be.

But something’s missing on the trees. . . can you guess what it is?

Trunks and shadows. Quite a difference, right?

Now, lest you think these trees are hard to paint, I took a close up so you can see they’re just smooshed on.

See? Smooshed. The pine trees are just one color of green. I just smooshed the paint around, heavier in some areas – making it darker – and lighter in others.

The knockdown texture actually helps create even more dimension.

The very beginning of the pond. I need to paint more rocks and shrubs to reflect into the pond, but I wanted to get at least the basecoat of blues and white on there.

I took this shot just to show you the scale of the mural compared to the kitchen cabinets on the right.

We may go a little higher still – the clients are debating on whether or not they want to. It’s fine with me. It just means I’ll have to bring my Beast Ladder – one of those jobbies that contorts into a thousand shapes and folds up into fourths. I love the Beast. It just weighs a ton.

So that was my Saturday. What did you do? Or, what are you doing tonight? Please tell me I’m not the only nut blogging at 9 o’clock on Saturday night! Please?