Office Mural: Version 1

When I designed the space for my home office, I kept a big blank white space on a wall because I wanted to have a place that I could long-term practice creating murals. (A hobby of mine from a young age, thanks to the support of my grandparents, but more on that in a future post :)) I finished the office space months ago, and that spot on the wall has been blank for some time.

Every time coworkers would see the wall in the background of my zoom window, they'd ask "Oh, is that a projector screen in the background?" And, ya can't blame 'em when it looked like this for months:

I'd have to explain, "no, that's a future mural wall, I just haven't gotten around to painting it yet" Well, in January 2022, after we came back from our trip to Orlando... we had COVD, and we were stuck inside. So, I started on this mural wall. I knew for version 1 I didn't want to be too firm in any one idea. I just needed colors, and to see what happened. I like the idea of large organic shapes, maybe plants, but I knew I just needed to start. So, I did. Step One was to start picking colors that worked together using my trusty palette book- Benjamin Moore is what the hardware store closest to me has on hand, so this book has been getting its use lately... Originally, I tagged A LOT of shades I liked. I think I had around 20-25

Step Two was to narrow those colors down to about 5-8. I didn't narrow them down until I was at the hardware store ordering the small cans themselves.

I narrowed it down to 6 colors, and I had a 7th small can from a previous project upstairs. (I didn't end up using the darker orange like I thought I would)

Step Three was to paint it a base color- I picked the blue. In hindsight, it would've made much more sense to paint the yellow since that's the lightest color.

Step Four was just squiggling lines on. Really. That's it. I took a pencil and started making wavy shapes. Step Five was picking some of those shapes and putting the colors in. I did rework an area in the top right that wasn't working well for me, but here's this step, in photos:

Step Six was to un-tape the wall border and clean up the line work

Here's the final version of the squiggly mural version 1:

And I did add black lines in a few weeks after I finished it:

I didn't like the black lines as much. I tried to use a paint marker, and it made the lines more bumpy. BUT I learned from it, and will stick to paintbrushes for it in the future. Is it great? Nah, but it's a version 1, it's not supposed to be. I'm hoping to do a version 2 winter of 2022, and then hopefully more frequently. As for the tools used, other than the small roller for the blue layer, I used these: