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I have just finished a mural on a powder room wall in old town Key West. The house is a new build in a compound and has an existing cottage on the property. The interior was getting its final touches the days I was working.
I had met the owners and seen the house in progress in November when we first started to discuss the project. Isn't that cottage cute? And a small plunge pool right off the living room, wonderful.
After our initial meeting the owners and I decided that the next step would be for them to decide on a motif based on images of my past work. I set up a page for them on this blog (the remnants of it are still here, called for the Larsens) and uploaded all kinds of past paintings. I knew that some of them wouldn't work, but there was also color to consider so I wanted them to see a lot of choices. When they decided on motif and color scheme I did a sketch on
22"x 30" 300lb watercolor paper. They approved the sketch, my price and dates of work. Next step was for me to select colors. I painted the mural in the same brand of paint that they used for the interior, Benjamin Moore. They choose a pebble finish for the walls, but I painted in flat. I didn't want any texture or sheen. Looking at color chips took way more time then I thought it would. I looked at colors before I painted the large sketch and selected colors I thought would go with the colors on the other walls in the room. Then after the sketch was finished and approved I took the sketch with me to the paint store and selected the main colors. In the end I got some great colors and I ended up with some primary colors that really mixed well.
I taped the wall edges, put plastic on the floor and then installed a cardboard floor so I wasn't slipping around on plastic. That was one of the best moves I made.
I rolled the sky color and then brushed a darker blue in the upper left hand corner to give the sky a shift in color from right to left. Next I brushed in the background water, background sand and started in on the shadow areas. That's when I realized I had made a mistake. I had planned to mix a lot of colors on sight because I wanted them all to work with the lighting that was in the room. It is a very small and dark powder room. I was working out of the quarts of paint and mixing colors from them was going to be a nightmare and huge mess. I went to the restaurant supply store and got numerous squeeze bottles. One for every major color I thought I would mix.
I took all the paints back to my studio and spent the rest of the afternoon mixing colors.
They were easy to work out of and transport. It made day 2 of the mural project much easier.
See you day 2!
