Gift of Love - Part 2

I managed to carry on with the mural painting over the weekend and finally finished it off last night. Of course, It was tiring, it was tough work... but I enjoyed every bit of it! But one thing is for sure.... It was a mammoth task not to be repeated in the foreseeable future. Ha! Ha! Give me back my watercolours anytime!

Well, here are more pictures of the painting in stages... (sorry for the reflections due to camera flash, as most pictures are taken at night)

I added a tree at the distant, some bushes around the house, painted more texture to the grasses and painted the roof tiles... and then, I decided to change the colour of the road from light blue/gray to a more earthy mud colour.

Argh! Something is not right with the roof tile.
It just looks weird to me...

Next, I painted the mushroom and added more light green leaves to the main tree. Everything is well taken care of, the house is there, the tree is done, I just needed to add a little more details to complete it... but

I still do not like that roof tiles!

So, I mixed some brown and covered it up even though I spent almost an hour painting it! Well, I guess it takes bold decision like this to paint a perfect picture.

There! It blended better with the rest of the painting now.

By this stage, I added the details to the whole paintings, and had more or less painted everything I wanted to be in the painting.... except for one last things.... FLOWERS!

Oh... there's the ladder again :P


So I painted many flowers, in white, pink, red, yellow... you name it, there're all there! I also made some changes to the windows .... and to finish it off... I inked the outlines of the main subjects like the tree, the houses, potted plants, etc.

This is how it looked like after I completed the painting.

Do you like to live in such lovely village? I do!

.... and here are some of the Winnie The Pooh stickers... these fellows are going to live in that painting permanently!


Alas, I sticked them onto the mural wall... and they looked as if they'd really come alive! I'm glad they feel very much at home! Ha! Ha!

Cost of House Paints $50
Cost of Acrylic Paints $100
Cost of ladder $30 (although I already had it for many years)
Cost of knowing that you did something that will put a big grin on your kid's face.... PRICELESS!

Gift of Love - Part I

I have been elected as Secretary-General of Singapore Watercolour Society for the term of 2007-2008... Hopefully, with the support and contribution of the other committee members, we will take the society to even greater heights...

Although Javier's first birthday is still another 3 months away, I decided to paint a humongous mural on his bedroom wall (measuring 160cm x 495cm or approx 5 ft x 16ft). No amount of money could ever buy such gift of love....Well, perhaps you say I could hire a mural painter, but it isn't the same when it's painted by Daddy himself, eh?

You see, his Mommy has bought a few stick-on Disney's cartoon characters namely Winnie The Pooh, Tigger, Kangka, etc. Instead of sticking them on plain monotonous walls like everbody else, Daddy wants to be different and he intends to paint a huge mural of a village with trees and flowers and houses where Winnie The Pooh & Friends can live in....

Gosh! This will be the biggest painting I'll ever paint!

To start it off, I bought some emulsion house paints (Blue and yellow) and painted the walls, with the blue as the sky, and yellow as the wall colour underneath the mural. The rest of the mural colours are painted with Daler Rowney and Van Gogh Acrylics Paints.

I'm planning to paint the wall on the right, where the blue area
will be the sky and white area will be where the actions are
gonna take place!

After marking important subjects with a pencil, I started painting the distant mountain, the first layer of a tree trunk, a curvy little road, and a big green patch to suggest grass and bushes.

YUCKS! at this stage...

After that, I focused on the tree and finished the dark tones of the trunk and leaves... and built up the texture of the grasses to make them look more realistic.

The tree is nicely taking its shape

After resting for a couple of days, I painted the light shades of the trunk and leaves. The tree is more or less done now, but I still need to go back to touch it up a little after the rest of the mural is painted.

Ooops! I forgot to remove the ladder!

The next day, I painted the clouds, and started on the houses, and grounds... this is where I stopped yesterday. There's still a long way to go, but hopefully I can get it done in a week or two.

Coming along nicely... don't you think?

Stay tuned for Part II.... coming soon!