The Mural Project

In January 2007, Joann and I started to get serious about putting together the nursery for our son. Joann's due date was at the end of March, so we had plenty of time to set things up. Earlier in the Fall, I had decided that I wanted to paint a mural of cartoon characters on one of the walls. Joann wasn't too keen on the idea, but after some negotiation she decided that it would be OK.

The project began with me brainstorming about what characters I most enjoyed when I was a child. There were many more to choose from than I could possibly fit on the wall, and I reduced the set to something manageable based on the quality of images I could find, both from the web and from books I have. My idea was to draw a path through a meadow, and to have some of the characters walking on the path out into the room. I decided to first create a black and white outline of the entire scene to project on the wall so that I could trace the characters before filling in the colors. Here is the resulting template:

On January 27, I began the painting job that turned out to take many more hours than I had anticipated. The initial work of painting the sky and grass went fairly quickly, although the paint I was using ended up taking up to three coats before it looked right. This was also the case for all the detailed painting. In retrospect, I should have spent more time investigating good types of paint to use as opposed to just concentrating on color.

Following is a series of pictures taken over the six weeks that I worked on this project. For the most part, I worked on the weekends, although as Joann's due date approached, I started to get nervous about finishing and painted after work too.

The mural after my first weekend of painting, The grass and sky are done, and I've started to paint the background of the characters in white.

Most of the characters are "primed" (Mickey Mouse and the Moon Rocket are still just outlines) and I've started filling in color.

The end of the second weekend of painting. At this point, I thought I could finish in another weekend.

The end of the third weekend. Almost everything I had done the previous weekend needed another coat of paint.

After four weekends of painting, things were starting to look pretty good. I used a paint pen to do a lot of the detailed lines on faces.

After five weekends of painting. The grass, sky, and road all needed another coat, and most characters needed some touch up.

After a final week of painting. We wanted to move the furniture in by the next weekend, and so Joann booked a number of hours to help me finish up. Max's tail needs hair and Eeyore's face needs another coat, but I can finish these details later.