Complimenting your furniture with a living room or bedroom mural

A beginner's guide

One of the best ways to add a bit of individuality to a room is by adding your own creations to the walls in the form of a mural. Generally people dismiss this as only appropriate for children's bed rooms or nurseries complimenting other matching bedroom furniture but a carefully chosen design can add a bit of interest to any room and be a great way to reflect your individuality and personality. If you're not a natural artist the idea of painting something on your walls could be a little daunting, but that shouldn't necessarily scare you off the idea. Below are a few tips and cheats that could help you create some impressive results with minimal talent required.

What you'll need:

Acrylic paints are a good, cost effective long lasting paint that you should find quite easy to mix and work with. Think carefully about your budget for the paints, you can buy acrylic paints extremely cheaply but budget paints won't last as long, so if you plan to have this mural for several years it could be worth investing a bit more in your paints.

Brushes are great for details, but when you painting on a larger scale it could end up taking you a very long time trying to cover big areas. A cheap and quick alternative is to buy sponge brushes, buy a bag of varying sizes and save the regular brushes for your final finishing touches.

Big is your friend

Until a couple of years ago I hadn't done any painting since my A level art days, and I'd only ever worked on a small scale. Then one summer I took a job working at a children's summer camp in America. They were putting on a play and needed a volunteer to paint the theatre sets. It took a bit of getting used to drawing and painting so big. The main difference you have to adjust to is not being able to see the whole picture whilst your working on it, get used to taking a few steps backwards regularly to check how things are going and that everything is in proportion. Also if you've only ever worked on a table top before holding your pencil at a slightly different angle can take some adjusting to, but if you stick with it you'll eventually be able to draw as naturally on walls as you can on paper. Have a pencil sharpener handy though because the rougher surface will wear your pencil down quickly. I know some people prefer to use carpenters pencils, although I still tend to use a normal HB.

Once you've passed these challenges of working big, you should actually find it makes things a lot easier, you now have plenty of space for the details add a larger margin for error; if you draw something slightly out of place on your wall painting it's far less noticeable than it would be in your sketch book.

You might benefit from doing a bit of practice on a white board or some large rolls of paper first to get used to the scale before you actually start painting on your wall.

Technique

First, just like with any decorating, you'll need to cover any carpets and furniture and sheets to avoid spills and drips.

Next clean your surface and wait for it to dry. Once your wall is dry and clean, paint any background colour you may want on the wall before outlining your design. It is far easier to paint over the background than paint a background colour around an image.

Allow the background to dry and then draw your out line in pencil and then work out which colours will needed to be painted on top of each other, again, it is much easier to paint over thing than around them.

Tips and Cheats:

Using a projector is one way to help you transfer an image from a small surface you're used to working with to a big one. If you can get hold of a slide or over head projector, all you need to do is print your image as either a slide or acetate, some modern OHPs actually use cameras so that you can use regular paper, and if you have a computer projector you have more options too. Have your drawing or the image you wish to copy turned into the format the projector requires, display it on the wall where you want your mural and simply trace the outline. If you're copying a famous character you could even just display this on the wall and trace that with out ever having to draw your own image.

If you can't get hold of a projector, you could use a scanner or photocopier to enlarge your image, and then tile it across several sheets of paper. Use graphite paper to transfer this image on to the wall. Simply blue tack the graphite paper to the wall, then stick your enlarged image over the graphite paper, trace the lines of the enlarged image firmly with a pen or pencil, then remove the graphite paper and you should find your outline has been left behind.

If you really don't trust yourself to paint straight onto the wall, or your walls suffer from damp or decay then you could buy some pre seized canvas and work on this, this allows you to work on a flat surface and makes it easier to start again if it all goes wrong. It also means that when you no longer want the mural you can take it down rather than painting over it.

It can often be a good idea to add a final black outline to your work, there is a number of benefits to doing this. It can make the image stand out a lot more clearly from the distance it is likely to be viewed from. It can also help separate similar colours that may look the same from a distance, but perhaps the biggest advantage of outlining for slightly less experienced artists is that the outline will usually cover up any mistakes. The outline can often turn a fairly simplistic looking drawing into something very impressive.

Bringing it all together

So now you just need to decide what it is your going to paint, whether you want to cover an entire wall or just have small characters hidden around the room for people to find. If you're decorating a child's room, maybe consider some matching cheap furniture. If you'e painting flowers in your living room maybe a bouquet of real flowers would compliment it, see where your imagination takes you.