On the rainy-sunday wall mural

Even before the move I was daydreaming of painting a mural after seeing amazing murals online. But in a rented flat painting the walls would only mean I would have to destroy it later, besides it would involve stripping wallpaper which then would require me to redo wallpaper when moving out and in total it was just too much hassle.

But now we have our own place. And many white walls. So while buying all sorts of tools and necessities in the hardware store I also got colours for my mural. And on a rainy day I decided to sneak myself out of the obligations of not having fully sorted out our removal stuff and instead paint the mural.

Step 1: removing the textured wallpaper. This step took longest, in part because I was scared of flooding into the edge of the parquet, where cardboard seems to have been used to dampen the sound of steps or to insulate the floor. After two evenings painstakingly soaking and scraping off the two layers of wallpaper, I finally ended up with a clean smooth wall.

Step 2: the sky. I had a small 1l container of white paint, a large 20l container of white, and 250ml each of blue, turquoise, green and black. The colours were fine but I needed much more black later. However first off for the sky I mixed some blue and some black into the 1l until I had the darker colour desired, painted the top of the sky and then added some white to the 1l container and dragged the still blue paint into it to achieve a subtle gradient.

Step 3: Then, adding more and more greens and black to the 1l container, I painted in layers of trees. See the phone in my hand for reference. The basic principle for the pines is inspired by Bob Ross and guessing.

Step 4: Clean up, add furniture back where it belongs and put edging back in place.

Step 5: Have a shower :-D

Formalities:

• Materials: ~2.5l white wall paint, separated into two containers, 250ml of blue and green (I didn't really use the turquoise) wall paint and 250ml of artists acrylic black paint (which is much more highly pigmented and I used to substiture my 250ml of black wall paint), painters tape and foil covers, water to remove wallpaper
• Tools: Stirring stick, different sized brushes, bucket for water
• Time: 6hrs removing wallpaper, 4hrs painting mural