Murals for Dummies

I can't draw. I feel like I should be able to, you know? I have a picture in my head of the thing I want to reproduce, but when pencil hits paper it's as if all the little neurons in my brain in charge of making my hand move burst into wild stomach clutching laughter as they shut down communication to the hand and watch as I painfully and poorly attempt to draw the thing I had pictured in my head. Every once in a while, just to mess with me, they let enough brain-hand communication happen to fool me into thinking "maybe this time!" as I draw one perfectly even and beautifully representative half of a heart shape. Then, as surely as Lucy is going to pull the football away from Charlie Brown at the last second, the Neurons slam a cover on the creative flow and, like a deflated balloon, the other half of the heart shape comes out looking Grinch-like, all wobbly and crooked and two sizes too small.

But I digress.

The point is (look! there it is!) I can't draw. So when I wanted to put a happy little summer-time mural on my sons wall when he was two, the usual "I'll draw some pictures and paint in the colors" was not an option for me. Plus, painted murals are a beast to paint over again later when it comes time to sell the house, so I immediately turned to my go-to medium: Paper.

First off, paper is a way cheaper way to make a mural, even a big one, than painting. You can get a block of colorful 8.5" x 11" cardstock craft paper practically anywhere for, like, $10. That, and a roll of masking tape is your total expense. Try getting enough mural paint for under $20! Second, you need practically no actual artistic talent at all to utilize it! Huzzah!

My son has been a freak for the outdoors pretty much since birth. He'd be feral in the back yard year 'round if we'd let him, but it gets cold here and then Child Services would come and blah blah blah. So when the weather started to turn and we couldn't go outside as much anymore, I made him a permanent summer on one of his bedroom walls.

I wanted to do a big leafy tree with a sun and some little animals, etc. The tree trunk was easy. I laid about 5 sheets of brown cardstock in a long line (the long way) and taped the seams together with the masking tape. Then, with a pencil, I drew a long slightly squiggly line down the center in what I thought looked like a good trunk-y kind of wobble. Then I cut along the line, and flipped the whole thing over. From the front, it was doing a pretty good impression of a tree trunk. I used the scrap half to make a nice long branch, and, voila, tree. Anyone can draw a wobbly line, I promise.

The key to all the rest, really, is tracing. As per the usual, I manged one half of a nice looking leaf. So I cut that side out, folded it over, and traced the mirror image. Then I cut the whole thing out and used it as a template for all the other leaves. Same with the apple, the butterfly, and the blue birds' wings.

See how the wings are seperate from the body? Of course the neurons let me draw one lovely wing. The next attempt looked like the poor thing had suffered a horrible accident with a lathe. So I traced the wing and added them seperately. The flower is made of a series of seperate circles, and the suns' rays are individually traced bits as well.

As for the bird and the squirrel, or whatever pictures you are attempting to create, just keep it simple. A very simple line drawing that is basically a representation of the thing you are portraying will do very nicely and look very cute and cartoony. When in doubt, look up a picture of the thing. I still have a dozen pictures of squirrels on my computer.

The leaves were the most time consuming part, but I really wanted to do them all seperately so it would look nice and leafy. So I spent a couple hours watching a movie one night while I traced and cut them all out. I did most of the rest of the pieces as well, and laid out the leaves in the pattern I wanted, then just put loooong strips of masking tape across their backs to turn them into "sheets" of leaves. The next afternoon it took no time at all to put the whole thing together. Instant mural. Because it's all just taped up there with little tape loops on the backs of the items, I was able to move things around and add things to areas where I thought I needed some more (my crowning triumph, the bee hive, which is all free-hand drawn...on one side, of course).

So, plus points: Cheap, relatively quick, doesn't require drawing or painting skills, not permanent, no stinky paint smells, no drying time.

Minus points: Potentially thousands of tiny masking tape loops, and you will end up replacing tape here and there over the years as it loses its stickiness. But, the one in my sons room has been up for 3 years now, and still looks as bright and cheerful as it did the day I installed it.

Happy muralling!