When I was a kid, I desperately wanted to paint a mural in my room. My parents rightly so, never let me. But I am an adult now and I own my own house so I decided now was my time. I am definitely not an artist and you you don’t have to be either to paint an outdoor mural. If you follow my easy steps you too can successfully paint an outdoor mural that you will love!
Planning Your Outdoor Mural : Choosing the Right Location
First consideration is visibility. How confident are you in yourself as an artist– and do you really care? I chose a kind of hidden wall in my backyard that I only see when I walk into my garden. Honestly I had little confidence in myself and this felt like a good place to start.
You’ll also want to consider the surface material (brick, wood, concrete) and how this will impact your ability to paint on it and the materials you will need.
Finding Inspiration For Your Outdoor Mural
Once you have a place your mural is going to go it’s time to get inspired! If you don’t have an idea already Pinterest and Instagram are great places to find inspiration. You can look up things like nature, abstract art, geometric art, even words or phrases would work.
Personally, I was inspired by the piano that Taylor Swift played at the Eras Tour. Yes, major Swiftie here. I desperately wanted to get a piano and paint it the same way ,but my house is too small to accommodate a piano. Using it as inspiration for my outdoor mural in my garden seemed like the next best idea.
Designing Your Outdoor Mural
To design your outdoor mural, I suggest first sketching it out on a tablet or a piece of paper. I use my Apple Pencil and my iPad on the app procreate. If you are going the tablet route you don’t have to use Procreate as it is a paid app ,but I already own it and do recommend it if you are into design/sketching. There are other free apps though that should work just as well. Also if you are lucky and have access to Photoshop you can use that, but it is not necessary at all. If digital drawing isn’t your cup of tea, print out the photo of the wall you are going to paint your mural on and draw on it with a pencil the old fashion way! It all works.
My process for designing my mural was as follows:
I imported a photo of the wall I was going to paint my mural on and while looking at my inspiration I sketched the design on to where I wanted it to go. Since I was working in Procreate I was an able to layer my inspiration photo over my wall photo and decrease the opacity so I could do some tracing.
The design step is so important because you can easily erase and edit before paint gets involved. Really take your time here, this will be a valuable guide when you start painting
Materials Needed for DIY Murals
- Paint– I used Sherwin Williams
- Paint Brushes
- Chalk
- Ipad (optional)
- Apple Pencil (optional)
The above materials assume that you have a wall prepared and ready to be painted. If you don’t have a ready wall, I would suggest cleaning it and then painting it with a good quality outdoor paint.
The paint that I used for my mural was left over from when I painted my house white. Make sure you are using outdoor specific paint so that your mural will last. If you are going to use more than one color I suggest going to Lowe’s or Home Depot and getting paint samples if you are doing a smaller mural. They are only about $5 per color for outdoor specific paint. Don’t use acrylic paint that you can get from craft stores. This won’t hold up to the elements and will crack and peel super easily.
Weather Considerations
Since we are talking about painting an outdoor mural, something you will need to consider is the weather. Here in the Pacific Northwest it is sometimes hard to string together a few hours when it isn’t raining. If you live somewhere like California where it’s sunny all the time, lucky you! You can skip this section. For those of us with weather read on. When I was painting my mural there was sometimes light misting rain. This didn’t affect my painting at all. To be on the safe side though it is best to find some rain free days. Ideally you don’t want it to be too hot either, having a little wiggle room in drying time for paint can be nice if you want to blend colors and such while you are painting.
Painting Your Mural
Transferring Your Design
Transferring your design from 2D to 3D is the hardest part. For me I was able to use points on the back of my shed as “landmarks” so to speak of where everything should be.
If you have just a blank flat wall you can use a grid method where you draw a small grid on your paper over your design and then enlarge the size of the squares and make a grid on the wall you are doing your mural on. Just google “grid method drawing” and there are tons of tutorials explaining much better than I can on how to use this method.
Another option is to use a projector. Maybe you already have a projector or if you want to go all in and buy one there are really affordable options on amazon like this one that you can use to help you trace your design directly onto the wall with.
Once you have your method of how you will transfer your design, I suggest using chalk to sketch your design. I would use white chalk or something light as colors like red could easily stain the base wall that you are painting on.
Painting Techniques
My mural was super easy, I used one brush and one color. I didn’t want too much color going on as I plan to have a lot of flowers in my garden and didn’t want to take away from their colors. Don’t be afraid to use more colors and brushes, reference photos can be really helpful to get your desired effect.
One thing I ran into was the paint wasn’t making a solid line because of the texture of the wall I was working on. If this happens to you try switching to a different brush type. I eventually found a brush that was giving pretty good coverage on my first stroke, and then I would let it dry and go over again if I wanted a more dense line.
As you are painting don’t be afraid to make edits, as you can see in the photo below I did this quite a bit. Designing on paper is a good start but sometimes when you get into it you may realize an element needs to be larger, or smaller, or you need to add/delete an element. As I was working on my mural, I kept reminding myself if it turned out horrible, I could always easily paint back over it and start over….or I could just enjoy the imperfections.
Finishing Touches
Once everything is painted give your mural a full day or maybe even two depending on how much paint coverage you used to make sure the paint is fully dry. Then you will want to take a damp rag and wipe down your entire mural to get rid of any chalk lines you see that may be left over. I tried spraying the chalk off with a hose and brushing it off with a brush and surprisingly neither were as effective as removing the chalk as the damp cloth. I suspect though this may be because my surface was more textures, so see what works best for you.
Conclusion
When you are done take time to step back and admire. You did that! creating an outdoor mural is such a fun project that anyone can do. By picking a design that matches your skill set you will definitely be able to create something you will love.
