When we bought our house my son’s room started out as a typical little boy’s room. It was light blue with cartoon airplanes painted on the walls. It was done well and it was cute, but for an 8 year old it was just a little too babyish.
With moving a lot due to being a military family, it’s really important to me to let the kids make their rooms their own. I let my son take the wheel in choosing the color his room would be and if he wanted anything special done to it. My son is an outdoorsy boy and wanted a room to reflect it. Now, if you could see how much dirt he packs into the house you may think that the whole house reflected his love of the outdoors.
I had recently picked up a few sample paints for another project, one of which was a Benjamin Moore color called Gray Owl. I had seen it used in rooms on Pinterest and it looked beautiful like a soft feather gray. I tried it in my house and yuck! The lighting made it look like day old oatmeal. I was disappointed in it but of course the boy liked it and that’s what he chose for his room.
He then asked for me to paint some trees and deer. So back to Pinterest I went for some inspiration. I was a bit nervous doing a full wall mural but I found a lot of silhouettes that looked easy enough. Just your basic outline of trees and deer and some with bears. Easy. No detail, just filling in the lines. But then I came across a mural of a bear in a tree and had to show him. He liked it and decided that it is what he wanted. Yay for me? You can see it here. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/91831279879598507/ Sorry I don’t have the picture here for you to see. I’ll try and get that figured out.
To start off I just put a piece of paper over the picture on my screen and traced. I have a problem with distorting my art when I need to make it bigger and I did not want to do end up with a pin-headed bear. I really wanted it to look as close to the inspiration mural as possible. To do that I drew a grid system over the tracing at half inch intervals. To put the grid on the wall I didn’t want to use a pencil and leave noticeable marks so I ran out to the shop and got my husband’s chalk line. I marked one foot sections with a tiny pencil mark then as my son held one end of the chalk line I pulled it across the room and snapped the line. After many snaps the grid was on the wall. Now every half inch square on my paper correlated to a one foot square on his wall. I used a pencil to copy from the paper onto the wall which turned out to be a pretty quick task and with no distorted pin-headed bear.
This is where panic set in! I actually had to figure out how to paint it! I had done simple murals for a church nursery, and my kid’s play room (a.k.a. the mechanical room) many years ago, and back ground sets for a play, but nothing so detailed. I gathered up a bunch of brown and tan paints from wall samples and craft paint. I’m not sure what kind of paint I should use, but my house, my rules. I went for the tree first. Basic tan went on, added some darker spots for shadow, some lighter for highlights and it was not too bad.
Notice the paint pallet? It’s the lid to a baking dish. You use what you can.
Next came the sleepy bear. I started by painting him in all black then going back over with gray and white for his highlights. Then added the brown in on his face and few other places just to give him a little more color. And before I knew it, it was the end of the day and the bear mural was done. I was shocked that it only took one afternoon/evening to finish and that includes stopping to make dinner!
I realize it’s no where near as good as the original, but hey, I’m not a professional. The boy is happy with it, which is good, because he lets me know his opinion on plenty of things and it’s not always what I want to hear. He actually liked it so much that he asked for more murals on the other walls. That’s not happening any time soon.
So, what do you think? Are you all jazzed up to go paint a mural?
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