D.I.Y. Painting a Mural.

Shellie And I on holiday in the far north of NZ

In my first year at University I left home and moved in with my partner Shellie. We were soon told that a small two bedroom house could be our house while we study if we did the renovations; and so we did.

Myself painting the fine details.

Diamond the cat chilling against a pre painted house

When the uni holidays came about we set to work emptying the house of all furniture, old paintings, and other crap. We set to work sanding down all of the walls and rafters.
We painted the interior of the house a light grey; a change from the sour yellow it was.
All of the rafters were painted white. We then had a number of feature walls; in the main bedroom we put up red striped wallpaper, in the living area we painted a burnt orange and in the bathroom we painted sky blue. As well as this I decided I wanted to paint a mural.

Burnt Orange feature wall in the dining room

Red and grey striped wall paper feature
wall in the bedroom

Blue feature wall in the bathroom









I set to work measuring the front bathroom wall. This was the best spot for it as it doesn't initially stand out, yet as you sit on the loo you can contemplate the artwork. Next I designed a simple layered image of a rock concert out of various silhouettes I found online. I chose a colour scheme that stood out and I printed the image. That was the easy part.

My final design which combines several silhouettes in to a concert,
made using MS paint.

The idea was a performer and
a crowd with some crazy lights
emmiting from the guitar.

Next I set to work with a measuring tape measuring out all of the points on the image to the wall. I drew the entire image on the wall in pencil and then I put brush to wall and began to add colour.

We got creative with the paint

The blank wall



An attempted splice so you can see the whole wall

Masking tape to guide the purple lines



This corner detail shows that several layers of the yellow
was needed to be effective.

What happened over the next few weeks was an amazing transformation of lifeless wall space into a colourful static performance. Each night when I had a break from my studies I would paint a little. As more colour made its way onto the wall the mural came to life!

There are still parts of the mural which I'd like to touch up, for instance, the masking tape around the heater has been there for years now but I'm no rush to take it off; there's also a spot that doesn't line up perfectly but I'm probably the only one who notices it as I look at it each day.

Putting my feet up, it doesn't all have to be about work.

It has come to the stage where we are soon to move out of our little house on the hill, but no word has been said as to the fate of the mural. Fingers crossed it survives. I like to believe I've added value to the house rather than reduced value.

My completely imperfect Rockstar mural.