Have you tried painting on a wall?

Just after high school, we had moved into a new home and the ceiling fan in my bedroom had some abstract kind of painting done on it. It looked to be painted in glass paint. Inspired by it, one day I had this crazy idea of painting a cartoon on my bedroom wall. I was scared that in case it spoilt the wall in any way, my parents would kill me! At the same time I also had this at the back of my mind that we are living in Government Quarters and they always repainted the apartments in between tenant movements.

Very carefully, I selected the area for my painting...it was the side wall of my window sill! I had decided to paint a small Tom from The Tom and Jerry show and that much area was enough. Only it was a little difficult to maneuver.

The wall of my bedroom was white in color and my Tom was black and white. The good thing was it hid very well behind the curtain folds. This isn't a picture of that painting but this is what I had drawn.

 

A couple of weeks went by and since nobody noticed little Tom, I decided to get in Jerry for his company and I painted a tiny Jerry, right next to it.

One day my mom saw and she said it was cute, well that boosted my confidence and I painted a nice blue dressed Goofy right in the middle of the main wall. Unfortunately neither do I remember exactly which image I drew nor do I have its picture. We were not allowed to touch the then rare 2 MP digital camera and nobody took such pictures with the traditional ones!

I had done these paintings with regular poster colors of Camel brand.

A few years later me and my sister did a couple more paintings on our bedroom walls, Dalmatians, Donald, The Hum Tum cartoon etc. This wall was a shade of yellow and was whitewash and not distemper, so there was a considerable difference in the texture of the wall and hence in the outcome too.

 

So, what I learnt while doing these paintings was that the wall absorbs much more water than paper. You would probably want to first draw very lightly in pencil, start with a thin layer of paint. Remember you would have to do a couple of layers of paint, so make your shade accordingly. I remember doing 2 coats and 3 coats sometimes. It depends on the background of your wall and then on the shades you are using. The smother the wall the better you can paint and the lighter it is less layers if coating you have to do.

I know this below painting is out of focus, I had to cut it out from the background of another picture. See how the paint has peeled of in a couple of places. Though that is thanks to my little neice who couldn't keep her nails of it.

What really gives your painting a nice clean look is the outline. I always do an outline in black and try to make it thick or thin depending on what kind of a cartoon it is. Usually cartoons have certain outlines really thick and some really thin.

The best one’s I ever did was again on a wall of light yellow shade but the wall was really smooth so I did not have issues of bad texture. Other big difference is that the lime wall absorbs much more water than these ones and on the white washed wall you may see a thin water mark around your painting as it spreads from the first layer of paint.

This was what I first made almost 6 years and 5-6 paintings later. It turned out pretty well and looked really cute J

 

 Again a result of a craving for doing something, this by far is my best painting on a wall. This one is special for the reason that I did it on my sister’s birthday and it is actually more than a foot tall.

 

This one here is the last painting I have done on a wall. It came out just fine. I wasn’t very happy with Snow-White and however hard I tried I couldn’t get her expressions right. Every time I painted her face it wouldn’t look cute at all so in the end I decided to leave the face blank.

 

These cartoons are really cute and look fresh and beautiful. Go ahead and paint some in your child’s bedroom or you little sibling’s bedrooms. They will love it for sure. You could paint nice flowers or some superheroes, depending on what the kid likes. To start with take a smaller item to draw and with defined boundaries to paint and finish with a nice and thin outline J

None of these painting exist anymore, due to renovations, that in a way is good, you get a new canvas every few years ;)
Happy painting!