My First Experience at painting a Mural

After I painted about a hundred cans (see my post on creating art from tin cans), I was hired to paint a mural. It was in a very nice backyard, behind a swimming pool. I had been using strictly acrylic paints up to that point, for almost anything I had ever painted, but this was such a much larger area, I thought I would need small cans of latex, such as are sold in large home-improvement stores. WRONG. Do not attempt to do this (in my opinion).

I bought five cans of the primary colors; red, blue, yellow, white and black, thinking that I could mix any color I needed with those. The problem with this is that one cannot paint a mural in one day, one week, or in my case even in one month! So you end up having to mix every color you need, then trying to match it the next time you go to work on your masterpiece.

It was torture. Finally, after about two weeks, I gathered up every bottle of acrylic paint I had (about 30 or 40), and carted them to “the site”….. What a difference that made! There was, of course, still some mixing of colors involved, but nothing like what I was doing with the latex, besides the fact that latex was messier and dried up faster on my “palette” (a plate). And the little bottles of acrylics go very very far; I could cover much more area than I had thought with them. Also, acrylics come in so many colors that you could never in a million years mix from those small cans of latex paints; like the bright, bright pinks and purples, etc. And they’re so cheap.

Another very important lesson I learned is always paint from left to right (assuming you’re right-handed), and from up to down. Otherwise, you get wet paint on your hand and smear it on the masterpiece. Boy, does that ever suck. Then you have to mix those same colors yet again, and fix what you messed up. You will see some examples of this (on the gray background) in the photos below. It is much easier to fix the mess on the background than in the actual painting, when the owners have a can of matching paint.

The sun in the middle I can not claim credit for. It is a metal-work that they wanted me to work around. I certainly did work around it. I have this problem. I’ve had it all my life. I don’t know what causes it. I have to outline everything in black, which is a painstaking and torturous process…. (See the “carried away” portion of my post on creating art from tin cans).

It drives me insane. If I didn’t have something in my psyche that causes me do this, life would be much easier. When I started this mural, I told myself, I will absolutely not outline anything in black.… Then, I got the first part of it done (the tree with vines), and I said to myself, “self, I will outline only this part in black, because it just needs to be so. The rest I will leave as it is”. Hohoho.

Of course I ended up outlining the entire thing in black. WAIT, There was one tree I didn’t outline. Because the gentleman who owned the house kicked me out. I mean, these were my good friends, but I had been there for so long, and they were so sick of me being there, that he finally (being the very wise person that he is), gave me a cut-off date. He said “Look, here’s the deal; we liked it the way it was two weeks ago. You’re nuts. You must go away by June 1st and not come back unless we invite you”. I was not working by the hour, it was a flat rate, but I probably would have been there until we were all very, very old if he hadn’t said that. I was just as weary of going there day after day as they were of me invading their space, so I was ecstacic when I got this news. I simply don’t know when to stop.

I have a psychological condition whereas I think that a black outline makes things stand out more, and gives a cleaner and neater appearance. My Mom says it’s just “my style”. So, scattered throughout this post are some photos of my first attempt at a mural, some of the befores and afters. Everything I paint looks the same. I am stuck in the 70s.

Tags: mural, mural painting, mural problems, mural challenges