Outdoor mural at friend's farm

It was an exciting start to June/last month.  After being happy and satisfied with how the mural in our bedroom turned out, I decided to advertise my mural painting services within the neighborhood's group email.  And lucky enough, a friend of ours that owns a farm nearby decided to hire me!

It was definitely a learning process, from consulting to picking out paint, and also trying to figure out pricing!  So as of right now, we are going with $5/sqft.  And yes, who knew that mural artist actually charge by square footage!  I did actually give them a tad of a discount because there was going to be a lot of white space in this mural.  And of course, there was also the "friend discount".  I definitely spent a lot more time than what I had planned on it.  Mostly because the wall was not all flat as you will see in a bit in the photos. Nonetheless, I'm so happy that the mural turned out well and that Beth and Mitch are so happy with it! :-)

Beth said she wanted bright colors and the flowers to be native ones.  And I actually found color inspirations in her garden:

The reds and yellows:

The blues:

Here it is!

I was a bit concerned seeing these colors but once I got the sample paint, it didn't look so bad thankfully:

Some practicing:

More practicing.  These ferns are a tough one!

These colors are definitely bright!

It ended up being 23ft by 9 ft:

But technically, with the over 1 feet of foundation on one side, it was about 10ft on a ladder!

Here goes!!

As you can tell now, the wall is not all flat, so it took a lot longer to get into these little nooks. And trying to get straight lines was also a challenge!

I wasn't so sure about how the top of these coneflowers looked at first.  But I'm glad it was fine in the end:

It actually took me an entire day to sketch on the wall so by now, this is end of Day 2:

Here is end of Day 3:

Saturday/Day 4 was a short day as there was potential rain in the afternoon.  So I could not risk having my paint "melt" on the wall!

By Sunday, it's end of Day 5:

This fern is taking forever!! 

I did have Charlie come out and help me hold the ladder.  It's been so crazy windy!!

The cat did occasionally keep me company too:

Although, it did use me as a scratching post once.  Ouch! Not nice - haha! Thankfully I had my "paint jeans" on and what's a few more scratches and paint on it :-D

The mural is coming along! :-)

Finally done with the fern!! And adding some of the insects.  You can see part of the butterfly to the top left of the photo:

One of the bees in pencil:

And after, with paint.  It turned out pretty well! I'm so happy :-)

By Day 6:

The wings of this dragonfly took a while too, but it turned out so well.  Yay! Especially when the dragonfly was a symbolic insect to Beth.  Phew, the pressure was definitely on!

Sunset on the final day:

Ta da!!

The ferns are supposed to be 2-tone, based on the final sketch, but I liked just having the lighter color against the darker stems.  And thankfully Beth agreed. It would have been pretty painstaking to go through that one particular fern again.  Ha ha!

Crazy to think I started with this...

And by the time Beth and Mitch returned from their family vacation, I was so happy to be able to give them this!

I've yet to sign the mural but while I've just decided on a business name, this is a good photo to end with :-)

Let's hope for some more mural work.  It's been really quiet as in no other emails/request, so I'm thinking I might have to visit some businesses in the nearby towns.  I better bring my "A" game!

Oh, and forgot to mention, all those hours "working" (42 hours and 5 minutes to be exact) and having to handle 2 ladders, paint, glaze, and what not, I managed to lose about 5lbs.  Woohoo... bonus! LOL!!