Sunday, December 15, 2013

Baby's room

Octopus Mural in Lyra's room
I decided to take a picture my sisters artwork and make into a mural on Lyra's bedroom wall. As I have little artist creativity or skills the image on the black paper has been challenging to work with on the tan wall.  
Here the original piece. If you notice the butterflies actually have fish in the wings. Tony would like me to add those onto the wall but I do not have enough faith in my ability to pull off such a unique looking butterfly.

Step 1
I projected the image onto the wall and outlined the octopus and moon with white chalk. I did this late a night so the room was dark, it made it easy for me to trace the image.
Step 2
Here is an image of the white chalk outline. I lightly removed some of the chalk in 1 inch areas and painting the outline with white paint. To fix errors I kept a white and dry towel handy to remove paint mistakes. From time to time I would projected the imagine on the wall to make sure the outline was correct. I took a break and started on Step 3 the following day.

Step 3
I painted the octopus purple all over and the filled in the moon with white paint. I just used regular matte cheap acrylic paint.  I took a break to let the solid colors dry.  I went back to Michaels to get more colors. I purchased a paint pallet to help mix colors. I used Martha Stewart's PEARL acrylic paints to give the octopus a more realistic appearance. I also went over the white moon with pearl paint. It took me about 4 hours total from starting with the matte colors to adding some depth with the pearl acrylic paint.


Step 4

Step 5-8