The Wall Painting

Mural in my Guest Room

Several years ago, I decided to paint a wall in our guest room as a huge nebula. Through a discussion with my husband in which he encouraged me to try something new, I decided this would be fun and new and challenging. I had no idea what I was getting myself into, really. 

When I started painting it, I figured it would take me a month or two. But that estimate was based on pure guess since I had never painted anything anywhere near this big. 

I started with colors first and covered almost the entire wall with various colors and tons of layers. These steps took months, like 4 months. Because I have painted many nebula before this, I knew that the layering of the colors would take some time. To really get the cloudy effect of a nebula, I used a sea sponge and layer after layer of color, often using different hues of the same color. 

The next step was the black. I learned after painting nebula for a bit that if I start with black and then try to cover it with color, the color never was very vibrant or bright. So I started beginning with color and then adding the black. It really worked for me. The colors are more bold this way and made it so I could really decide the shape of the nebula. With the mural, I had a hard time deciding how much of the edges of the wall should be black. I knew I did not want the whole wall to be color with a little bit of black, but I wanted to have a lot of explosions of color. I started at the edges with black and moved the black in until I liked the look of each section. Then I went through and added black in the center areas. The whole black process took 2 months or so.

The last step was to add the starts. It is hard to see in the picture above that there are hundreds of stars on the wall. I used white, pink, and green and used a few different small paint brushes to add a plethora of stars. That took me a month or so. I love this part of painting nebula; it seems to me that when I add the stars, the painting comes to life. :)

This painting was difficult in that it was so big I felt I could see every tiny part I didn't like, which made me continue to paint things over and over. In the end, I learned a lot about color, layers, my tools, and myself. I wanted to give up so many times and just repaint the wall white, but I did not. I just kept going back to it and with time, energy, effort, persistence, and determination, I finished it!

And I Love It!!!!

Hug!!