Painting the Kids' Beach & Sea Bath

How to paint a mural without being an artist. Still a work in progress....

 

(the outlet and hook will be changed out!)

As I've enjoyed a long, unplugged break, I'm still working on the kids' bath mural. You can see the original bath we had to deal with and read about the first part in this post. I still need to add more detail to the sandcastle.

Here are some details I thought I'd share on how to paint without being an artist...

Making the pail in the sand:

After the free-hand drawing in pencil, I used tape for straight edges on the pail. You can see I started filling in the pail with "sand" and will finish that another time.

You can scroll back to the top photo to see the nice straight edges. I'll continue to add shading here and there and a final top coat, also white for the handle.

On another wall will be a whale. I used the whale in the shower curtain as my model.

Sketch in pencil first, then I followed the outline in blue marker. Don't ask me why, I have no idea! I wanted a thin but sharp color. Yes, I drew it around the light switches - if all goes according to the idea in my head, the switches will be the whale's eyes.

I'll paint the switch plate to make eyes, add the smiling mouth and a spray of water from its blow hole. I'm not sure which color to paint the wall, either carry the sand color or a very light blue. Thoughts?

And here is a great example of working in the physical features into a painting. As I was painting the water, I noticed that if I brought out the sand, then the outlet could be hidden a bit. 

We'll also paint the heater and baseboard the same sand color.

Lastly, another place I'm stuck....

How to blend the sandcastle image through the corner to the water scene? The water under the window will be an under-water scene, but the sandcastle is, of course, above the water! I'll figure it out.... this is why it takes a while of dabbling here, dabbling there!

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts and catch-up after a nice break!