This post has images! If they do not show up for you, please click through!
Over the Christmas break I got to do a little birch forest mural in a friend’s kitchen. It’s taken me ages to post the photos because the lighting and space made it really hard to get a good picture that properly represents it, but I think I’ve hit the point where I’ve decided sharing bad phone pictures that look like they were taken on a little digital camera in 2003 is better than sharing nothing at all.
ALSO, I am of the opinion that if I am going to lean into–nay, embrace–the vibes of the days before social media, I might as well go whole hog and do just regular blog posts with photos that look like they were taken on a digital camera in 2003. Anyway, shitty photos aside, I’m really happy with the actual mural, and I think they were too!
The definition of “trust the process”
Anyway, I have some tiktoks/reels with a few bits of the process, but it was actually a really easy technique.
I only had a few colours: a honey-tinted off-white for the background, regular white, black, yellow, red, and a very light blue.
-Mix a few leaf colours out of the yellow/red/blue, and paint a bunch of swipes on the wall. Be sparing with the red as it will overwhelm quickly.
-Make tree trunk shapes out of painters tape all up the wall, fill with light blue, then dry-brush with a white/lighter blue up the middle for depth.
-Slap some dry-brushed stripes and spots and eye-shapes with black (mix with the light blue to soften if you want) and remove tape once dry
-Paint on a few branches with the black, and add a few more leaves to fill in the spaces. DONE.
At this point, I added some little birbs but as you can see, absolutely not necessary. If you want to paint lots of layers further back, reduce contrast the further back you go, and increase it the further forward you come. It isn’t necessary, depending on the aesthetic you’re going for, but it can certainly help break it up.
Okay well that’s that. Hope you enjoyed. If you want to see the videos, they’re not informative per se but they show a little more, and are on my instagram/tiktok. Good luck finding them, I don’t feel like doing it myself. If you wanna learn you gotta WORK. Also deep apologies to whoever is reading this on the internet archive wayback machine 15 years from now. I guess you’ll never know.
I love to share my art and comics, and I’m extremely blessed to be able to do it full-time as a career, in part due to readers like you! If you would like to support my work, please consider subscribing to my Patreon for as little as $1 a month!
If you would like to be notified of new posts, please subscribe below!
