Painting a Wall Mural

“I enjoyed painting a dance recital and who knows what I might paint next!”
I ended my post with those words at the beginning of the summer. Little did I know that by the end of the summer the dance studio would be expanding and I would be asked to paint a large sunshine behind the new reception desk. Painting a wall mural was a first for me.

In my planning, I created a design on my computer and printed a grid over the design with each square representing a square foot. Then I taped together long sheets of a thin deli-like paper that I’ve had for years. I’ve made many a pattern from that paper roll. I drew square foot lines on the 12×7 foot drawing surface and then drew my design onto the large paper using the grid as a guide. (If you are not sure how to do that, reference this post I wrote a few years ago.)

Now there is probably a proper professional way to transfer the design to the wall (besides just drawing it on the wall the begin with!) I’m not a professional, so my solution was to tape the whole paper pattern to the wall along the top. Then I began cutting out each ray and taping it in place on the backside until all of the rays were taped to the wall like a reverse stencil. Hopefully you can get the idea from this picture.

My plan was to sponge paint the bright yellow background around the paper leaving the rays unpainted. That was much easier than drawing each ray on the wall and then trying to carefully sponge around the rays. It worked great! This picture shows the wall sponge painted in yellow with the paper still taped to the wall. I forgot to get a photo when I removed the paper!

With the paper removed, I painted the dark orange sun and small rays. I painted some of the long dancing rays with a lighter orange. Even though the wall was already painted white, I still painted the white rays and around the sun with the same brand of paint I used on the rest of the mural so the texture would be the same. I used Liquitex tube paint mixed with a bit of Clear Mixing Glaze (which I left from some house sponge painting projects.)

When all was dry, I mixed some larger gold glitter with gold glitter paint and painted over the lighter orange rays to give them sparkle. That looked great but the bright orange sun needed sparkle as well. For that, I used an iridescent glitter paint giving it a slightly different shine. Depending on how the light hits the glitter the mural changes as you walk by.