An Impromptu Mural

I've been wanting to start practicing mural painting, but I've been waiting until I had a big blank (unimportant in the house) wall.

I had also been wanting to put something decorative in the gym space, because it was feeling a bit sterile. I searched online for some wall art, and it all seemed a bit ... aggressively cheesy.

Then, when I was working out the other day, I kept thinking "UGH these ugly brown folding doors are the worst to be looking at during some of these exercises."

BOOM, an ember of an idea. Well, no. This was a blaze of an idea.

So I decided to paint a mural on the ugly folding doors.

Initial thoughts:

• I want it black and white, because I want the gym to be in that color scheme

Black and white would be easy since I had leftover paint from the fireplace project.

• I think I want a motivational phrase, this would also help me play with typography

My favorite is "Keep Moving Forward" (Shoutout to the deeply underrated Disney Movie 'Meet The Robinsons') However, once I started playing with that in the computer, it wasn't fitting properly. Instead, I went with "Keep Going"

• I want it to span the entire door, and the trim around it

For the dimensions, I measured the entire trim with it: Width is 40.75", Height is 79"

• I don't want this to be overly complicated because I want to use the gym, also a time limit will keep me from overthinking this

And here's my steps of action:

STEP ONE: Clean & Prime the surface

I'm glad I thought to wipe the door down first, because that thing was naaaaasty. A quick and thorough wipe down with Clorox wipes revealed at least a few years of grime.

Once that dried off, I primed the surface. I had leftover drywall primer from the basement hallway project, so I just used that. I'm sure there's a more specific type of primer, but in this case, it's a closet door.

STEP TWO: Base Coat

I knew the background should be white (I didn't want to darken the space a ton since it's a smaller room with a very little window) so I used more leftover paint to cover the doors and trim.

This took two coats to get good coverage. (the photo below is just after the first coat) My initial thought was that the very edge of the trim would be just a black outline, so I didn't worry about coating that.

STEP THREE: Design

While that was drying, I went in on the computer and started playing around with the design of it.

I put the dimensions into Adobe Illustrator and started flipping through typefaces to find the right kind of condensed san serif. I knew I wanted to tweak the lettering for more dimensionality, so this was really just a jumping off point.

Once I had landed on a starting font, I angled it to fill up more of the door space, created outlines, and started stretching points until I felt comfortable with it.

I tend to gravitate towards "Saul Bass"ish lettering forms, with imperfect angles and exaggerated lines.

I also used photoshop to make sure I was okay with the look of it in place.

STEP FOUR: Logistics of the Transfer

This was the least fun, but most important step.

Once the design was done, I put it on a flash drive to plug into our projector. However, given the size of the actual room itself, I wasn't able to get the projector to properly show it on the door... Time to consider all options.

Next thought was to grid it out, and try connecting dots. After figuring out the points for the letter 'K' I decided there's got to be a better way...

A stencil? I considered printing it out using rasterbator.net (it sounds bad, but it's just a site that takes an image, breaks it up into different sheets of paper so you can scale it for larger posters, and prints it) After tweaking this to the right size, I realized 48 sheets of paper, printer ink, and the hassle of cutting, taping, etc. might be a bit excessive...

Then, after a good night's sleep, the most painfully obvious realization hit. Why not cut the image into two pieces (a top and a bottom) and project it that way? Friggin' duh!

So that's exactly what I did, and it worked.

STEP FIVE: Transferring the Design

The room is in the basement, and with one tiny window, I was able to get it pretty dark. I used my tripod to get the height for the "top" portion to sit right, or as well as it could, and it lined up quite nicely. The bottom part wasn't as easy since I had to line it up to match some existing lines, but thankfully I settled on just getting the last 'G' to properly align and adjusted from there.

I used a pencil and a large ruler to transfer the outlines onto the space. While I was getting in some of the door frame areas I kept thinking to myself, "I am SO glad I got the projector to work or this would be a nightmare"

STEP SIX: Paint the Outlines

I used a narrow paintbrush to get started on the outlines. I didn't tape anything off (which, in the future, I will) but tried to freehand it instead. It wasn't terrible, but since I was lacking in confidence, my hands were shakier than I'd like.

*with hindsight, I would go back over the outlines a couple times to get it cleaner

STEP SEVEN: Fill It In

Filling in the spaces was a very satisfying step, even if I had to do 2-3 coats to get proper coverage, but seeing the progress was nice.

STEP 8: Clean Up The Details

Parts of it got a little smudgy with the pencil, and some of the edges were looking a little ragged, so I went over it multiple times to clean them up.

During this step I also did the section that touched the walls to line up with the pattern itself, creating a fully wrap around look. (instead of it being a full black outline like I had originally thought I wanted, this looked better)

Overall time: 1.5-2 days

Biggest lessons:

• It's so easy to get sucked into it, so making mandatory breaks will be a necessity in them going forward

• Use tape on straight lines, it will save some headache later

• Use a projector, but be smart about how to do it. There's no shame in breaking it into pieces to get it to work :)

• Having multiple sizes of paintbrushes is key

• A deadline is a good thing for your first one because you're forced to figure it out and move forward

I'm looking forward to doing another one in the future, but I need to get a specific wall (that's currently wood paneling) to a place where it can be used for mural practice. More than anything, doing this first one has awakened a desire to do more.