Secret garden mural

Mural painting of a door leading to a secret garden…

I got a commission from my lovely mother (in-law), Judi to paint a mural on her garden wall, of an old door leading through into another, secret garden. There is an amazing time lapse video (see below) of me doing the painting. But first I want to show you the design process we went through to reach this stage!

I only had one weekend to paint the mural, so we had to plan well in advance. We began with Judi telling me exactly what she wanted. She had some pretty specific ideas, which made it easy to get a clear idea of what I might paint. She knew she wanted a wooden door, possibly painted blue with a slightly overgrown, english style garden behind with lavender, hollyhocks and cyprus trees – oh, and don’t forget the black cat!

To help form these first ideas, we looked at lots of images: photos of doors, photos of gardens and flower, existing paintings and murals to get more inspiration, and to see what style Judi liked or didn’t like. Take a look at my pinterest board to see some of the images:

Once I knew more or less where we were going, I drew up a few sketches using ink and watercolour pens. We then went back and forth a little with me showing Judi sketches, and her telling me what was good, and what she wanted to add or get rid of.

Then we were ready to paint!

I started by sketching out the rough outline on the wall with a pencil, then continued by painting in blocks of colour and adding more and more detail as I went along. Take a look at this great time lapse video of the whole thing:

We were all really pleased with the finished mural, and now I have a very happy mother (in-law)!