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What are the Best Tips for Creating Hand-Painted Murals?

Sheri Cyprus
Sheri Cyprus

Making a project plan and executing it without having the attitude of a perfectionist is one of the best tips for creating hand-painted murals. This type of project should be fun even though it will also serve as a wall covering in the home. It's easy to let doubt about what the finished mural may look like keep the crafter from getting started in creating hand-painted murals. A great tip to overcome this common problem is to start with a small, out-of-the-way section of the home such as a laundry closet or basement bathroom.

Even for a small area, the space should first be examined to see what ideas it inspires. For example, a front-loading washer and dryer set with bubble-like, circular glass doors may inspire a fish and bubbles ocean theme wall mural. This type of whimsical idea for hand-painted murals can give a fun look to an otherwise dull laundry space. A small starting project like this can give the hand-painter the confidence for a larger area such as a child's room.

Children can participate in hand-painting murals to increases their creativity.
Children can participate in hand-painting murals to increases their creativity.

A great tip when hand-painting a wall mural for a child's room is to let him or her take part in the project in an age-appropriate way. For instance, the crafter can narrow the choices of themes and colors to allow the child to make the final design decision. Penciling the basic design onto the background colors can make hand-painted murals less intimidating to approach, and even children can fill in shapes or finger paint grass or sky techniques. Creativity should be encouraged during the mural painting: it's simple to paint over any slops of paint right away by blotting them, covering with background color and trying again.

Children should be encourage to participate in choosing colors for a hand-painted wall mural.
Children should be encourage to participate in choosing colors for a hand-painted wall mural.

Even for less whimsical mural styles, covering errors and redoing the section is usually possible. Even if the end result isn't great, the crafter can simply paint over it and begin again. It's best to work on hand-painted murals for a few hours a day rather than trying to complete them all at once. Mistakes or inconsistent painting techniques are more likely to occur when a person is tired.

Most people find paint-by-number murals much easier than making a freehand design on the wall, unless one has very strong artistic ability.
Most people find paint-by-number murals much easier than making a freehand design on the wall, unless one has very strong artistic ability.

Starting in the center of the wall and working around that point is a tip for creating hand-painted wall murals that many crafters appreciate. This way, a full scene will fit on the wall despite any miscalculations. If the mural is worked from one side to the other and the amount of spaced used isn't accurate, the result could be an incomplete picture with one end looking cut-off from the rest of the scene.

Discussion Comments

irontoenail

@Ana1234 - I know my mother's school regularly gets their students to decorate their classroom doors for different occasions and the students have to collaborate on their design in order to win prizes for the class.

I actually really like it when cities have a lot of murals around the place from established artists. There are some really beautiful and strange ones around my town and it gives you something to look at while you're shopping.

Ana1234

@MrsPramm - It's great when you can get input from the students like that. We had something similar in my school when I was a kid, except that it was a bit more permanent. They wanted to do some paintings on the walls and on the concrete grounds of the school and they basically asked students to design them in a competition. They then got some professional graphics people to come and paint the winners onto the walls as murals. It was really cool in the end. Although I was a bit disappointed that we didn't get to paint the murals ourselves.

MrsPramm

When I was visiting a school a while ago we had great fun with this one class planning and making a hand painted mural for Where The Wild Things Are. The students each made their own paper monster, completely designed by themselves and we all collaborated on a massive background banner, with me drawing the outlines of trees, flowers and the boat and the kids painting them. They got to request the types of trees and things they wanted but I drew them so that we didn't have to worry about individual mistakes on the big sheet.

Then, we stuck all of the individual monsters on the banner. It looked amazing when it was done. And everyone was really proud.

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    • Children can participate in hand-painting murals to increases their creativity.
      By: Andriy Petrenko
      Children can participate in hand-painting murals to increases their creativity.
    • Children should be encourage to participate in choosing colors for a hand-painted wall mural.
      By: Petro Feketa
      Children should be encourage to participate in choosing colors for a hand-painted wall mural.
    • Most people find paint-by-number murals much easier than making a freehand design on the wall, unless one has very strong artistic ability.
      By: mrallen
      Most people find paint-by-number murals much easier than making a freehand design on the wall, unless one has very strong artistic ability.