Simple Jungle Mural: Some Tips and Tricks

This is the mural in my son's room... he is rapidly outgrowing the animals and is much more interested in superheroes these days.  I'll be repainting this soon so I thought I'd share it with you all before I do!

I took the designs for the animals right from his bedding so everything coordinated.

This foliage goes all the way around the room for continuity (and as filler for behind pieces of furniture).  I wanted to make sure if we ever moved the furniture around, there wouldn't be a big blank space on the wall.  This is such an easy method for doing greenery:

1. paint your background color (works really well with sky blue)
2. mix 1 part background/sky color with 1 part greenery color and paint some foliage
3. use full strength greenery color and paint more foliage on top of that

You can see another example of this here

See how some hills look farther away?  This is one of the murals I painted at our church.

This also works great with clouds (adding more blue to some clouds to make them look farther away)

The clouds on the horizon are really faint (mixed with a lot of the blue) so the painting has a quiet/hazy feel.  It helps push the horizon way off into the distance as well.

This technique gives the mural depth (even if it's cartoony like the jungle mural).  This is done by creating a sense of atmosphere.  When you go outside and look at something far away, it actually looks bluer than objects that are close to you.  This is because of all the "atmosphere" that is between you and the object.  It's the same stuff that makes the sky look blue.  You can play with the amounts;  just know mixing the two colors will help you achieve dimension in your painting!

The finish on this dresser was super ugly (it was mine when I was a kid) so I continued the mural on it.

I freehand this stuff just because I've been painting murals for 15 years, but I used to rely heavily on projectors to help save time.  If you can get your hands on one, you can have your mural done in no time!  One more thing:  use white chalk to draw your outlines.  It wipes right off with a wet rag when your paint is all dry.  You'll drive yourself nuts trying to erase pencil!

Any questions?  Are there other tips and tricks you'd like to learn about murals?  Ask in the comments and I'll get back to you (as long as your comment isn't "no reply").  I'm also going to start a "tricks of the trade" series on The Creative Imperative so I'd like to know what you're curious about!

Blessings,
Jamie
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*Also, if you'd like to see more examples of my work you can go to Murals by Jamie.  I haven't updated it since last year, but you can click on the slideshow to peek at some of the things I've painted in the past*

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