Painting another child's bedroom mural - a Star Wars the Clone Wars mural
I have finally caved in to my son's request to paint his bedroom. We went back and forth between painting the walls red and decorating it with Star Wars posters, or painting a space-themed mural on his walls and ceiling. The mural option won out in the end, though I'm already starting to wish I had argued for the red-paint option. It is a work in progress, and it will be for a while to come I fear. It's a good thing he and his little sister don't mind sharing a room during this process.
The first step (after prepping - spackling, masking, etc.) was to do the sky's background. I drew a curvy line to indicate the horizon, about 3/4 of the way up the walls, all the way around the room. Then I opened a can of purple and a can of dark blue paint, and with one brush dipping back and forth between the two colors, I painted the entire ceiling and the upper part of the walls with swirled purple and blue, smooshing them together. It was a combination of French brush and dry brush and a little bit of rag painting (dabbing at heavier bits of paint with the rag to prevent runs, which gave it an interesting texture here and there). There was no particular method to it. I didn't put any glaze in the paint.
Once I had that blue and purple background, it was time to add stars. I got some white paint and mixed some glaze in with it. I used an old toothbrush and dipped it in the paint, then ran my forefinger across the bristles to spray specks of white paint onto the darker background color. This worked very well and only took an hour or so to do the whole sky with stars. I used latex gloves, which helped save my hands.
I am pretty happy with how the sky turned out. I have started adding other features, but this is not going nearly as smoothly. I will put pictures up when I've worked out some of the problems. The main problem is I am not much of an artist, but I was not willing to shell out $95 a piece for Fatheads of the Star Wars the Clone Wars characters, ships and droids. Hence I am trying to paint them myself. Actually the gunship turned out fairly well, and Asoka doesn't look half bad, though she's only half finished. More pictures to come.
