This month’s fun project was painting a mural for my future niece/nephew. I’ve broken down the process from start to finish in case you either want to make one on your own, or you’re curious about what goes into it!
Step 1: The idea
Since we don’t know the sex of the baby, we wanted something gender-neutral, bright, and eye-catching. They decided to go with outer space for the theme.
Step 2: Sketching
First, I started by sketching out some characters. The requirements: Aliens, planets, spaceships, and of course, their dog Poppy.
Step 3: Move to Illustrator
I image traced my drawing from my sketchbook in Illustrator and started to mockup up some different layouts. We originally thought we were going to paint the whole room blue, but then realized that if we wanted lots of colour, a neutral base would be better.
Since drawing in Illustrator feels easier than drawing with a pencil at this point, I created the rest of the designs from scratch in Illustrator.
Step 4: Refinement stage
We shifted the direction after deciding to paint the wall white, and I got to refining the design and exploring colour palettes. I chose a five-colour primary colour palette that felt bright and energetic, without scaring the baby.
Step 5: Get approval from future parents
Success!
Step 6: Have your boyfriend do the tasks you don't want to do a.k.a. printing off your design from Staples, buying paints, and prepping the pounce pattern
Teamwork makes the dream work. Thanks Evan!
Step 7: Transfer the design onto the wall
Evan printed the patterns at the proper scale and scored the outlines of the design with a little spikey wheel (the technical term, obviously). Then we taped up the design and he patted down the paper with powdered charcoal. That way, the outline of the design transfers over, and you don't have to freehand the design.
Step 8: Paint!
Self explanatory.
Step 9: Patiently wait for baby to arrive
Thanks for following along!
