A quick Wall Mural

Its been a few months living in California and I have made a few friend, met some of my neighbors and still some days are very tough to get through. This change is a daily reminder of the inevitability and unpredictability of life… tomorrow is not guaranteed! 

This mural happened during one such day where I refused to give in and decided to channel my confusion and desperation into something eye-catching. DH was out of town for business so he couldn't pull me out of my trance and I made it with the expectation that if he doesn't like it, I'll paint right over it and bought a pint of background color in advance.

A long time ago I had seen one of my favorite blogger Alisa Burke  paint a wall in her home with flowers and that inspired me to try it out. This is how the wall looked before I started. I had some black folkart craft paint on hand and decided to use it. It took me less that half of a 2 oz. paint bottle to complete this mural. I looked up some of my favorite flowers and sketched them on a scratch paper. To get a sense of scale I took a couple of round serving trays and traced huge circles on the wall, these were going to be my big flowers. 

I lightly penciled in the lines for a general guide, knowing fully well that the end product might not be anywhere close.

I used a small round brush and black acrylic straight out of the bottle to paint the flowers. The wall is heavily textured and that worked both in favor and against of the art work. I was so motivated to keep going otherwise the texture would be nothing but a hinderance.

After all the big flowers were in from the sketches, I needed to fill the gaps and connect them and for that I googled, henna patterns.

Henna patterns were very repetitive and the close cluster provided the negative space required to make the flowers pop. The familiar paisley and the swirls along were the connecting dots between these flowers.

Here's how the final wall looks. Its often mistaken for a wall paper but when people step closer to find the seam line, the texture in the wall gives away the imperfections in the painting. I was pleasantly surprised when DH said he liked and a little disappointed that I don't have any excuse to paint over it.

It took me a few days to accept the wall with all its imperfections but now I have began to appreciate it and have learned to not look for a paint brush every time I walk past it.