After over a month of planning and painting, here are the final stages of the mural. The final dimensions are 9 feet wide by 5 feet high. Dodi spent as many as 3 hours a day, most days, between February 23rd and March 27th. We spent about $100 on paint and materials.

We're just glad we got it finished before we had the baby.





The Final Image

My wife is, of course, Completely Awesome!

Previous Progress Reports:
Mural Planning, Progress Report 1, Progress Report 2

Gallery with more detailed descriptions:
Celertiy's Room Gallery

Dodi has been hard at work since we last posted a mural update. As I mentioned before, I don't think we understood the scope of the project when we initially proposed it. We're now getting close enough to Dodi's due date that we're concerned that she won't be able to finish it before she hatches.

She's made some amazing progress over the last couple weeks and hopes to be done by the end of this weekend, although we'll see. The work on the various animals does tend to go faster than the work on the background because it is over a much smaller area.

However, before she can do the animals, she needs to finish the ground cover and background.  Click through to view the image at high resolution to get the full effect.


Dodi is using a neat technique that uses bristles from a broom dipped in paint.  Using successive layers of different colors, she can create a convincing grass effect.


Using a white, then red colored pencil she transfers and scales the images from her original drawing to the wall.  The pictures on the wall are 5 times larger then on her original drawing, so she uses a tape measure to draw bounding boxes and establish the position to maintain her original composition.


Now it's just a giant "Paint by Numbers" drawing as she fills in the various animals.  She will also be adding in trees, rocks, and bushes to break up the ground cover.



As before, you'll want to view the whole gallery for full sized images and more detailed descriptions.