The year is coming to and end, and with it the necessity of reinventing ourselves shows up, and one of the most common way of doing this is rearranging our bedroom and painting those plain white walls that have been around for years. That’s why today we want to share with you this little tutorial in which we’re going to show you how to easily create a nice mural regardless of your drawing skills.

Step 1: Find the illustration we want

First, we must define the image we want to place in our wall, in this case I’ve chosen a picture of my grandpa to pay him a small tribute. Once you have picked your picture, you can redraw it in Photoshop or Illustrator to highlight the main edges and define the main lights and shadows, then you can make a quick sketch to see how is going to look in your wall.

On this point is where your creativity is required, because whatever you place on this instance is going to be featured in your wall, so let your imagination fly!.

Step 2: One problem, how can we enlarge the image?

I have defined the picture that I want to place in my wall (I have the colors and everything), however, there was something worrying me, and that was the fact that I’m an awful cartoonist and I had no clue of how to translate the image to my wall in a bigger scale. First I thought about printing it in several sheets and then join them with tape, but that seemed too complicated and bothersome, so I figured out an easier and simpler way of solving the problem.

These are the tools I employed:

I went to the nearest stationery and bought a translucent sheet (you can find a special type that allows you to print over them in case you want a more accurate model) and a Sharpie. Then I went back home, I opened Photoshop and I traced the picture on the sheet using the Sharpie while I kept the sheet over the monitor with my other hand. Then I grabbed some cardboard to build a projector (I ended using a box that already had the shape I was looking for), you can build your own box using cardboard and glue/tape. The next thing to do was pasting the translucent sheet in one of the box sides, then I took a lamp, my old tripod and I began making tests.

Step 3: Adjusting the set

This step is very important if you want to make things right, you must find a strong base for your projecting box, in my case I utilized my old tripod and I attached the box to it by using some tape. Having the lamp (the strongest the bulb, the better), I placed it in a steady place (on this case I used a chair), it’s just a matter of being creative and harnessing any object that you find in your house, make sure that the lamp and the box remain still once you start drawing.

Step 4: Projecting the image

Once I had everything set, I made a few tests in order to obtain the sharpest picture possible with the dimensions I wanted, you just need to adjust the distance between the box and the wall and the position of the lamp in order to obtain the best picture possible.

Tip: Do not put the lamb right next to the box because the image might look double (I guess it has something to do with the lamb filaments), instead of that you should move the lamp sideways till the image looks clear enough, this is really easy to accomplish.

Very important tip: Once the box and the lamp are set, do not move them until you finish drawing, if you move them in the middle of the process, it will be hard to obtain the same picture again, so please be careful and take off your bear slippers.



Step 5: Painting the image

Finally, you just need to grab your favorite tool and start painting, you can use brushes, colors, airbrushes and just anything you feel comfortable with, in my case I worked with Sharpie to highlight all the edges.

I made a huge mistake, I traced the entire picture and then I decided to apply a lighter base color, so I covered again with paint and oops!, I accidentally moved the box, so then it was impossible to leave everything as it was before, therefore the final result was slightly different than the original idea.

This was the final result, I hoped you’ve enjoyed this tutorial and you start adding life to your walls before the year ends. On my case I’m already working on my second wall, this time I’m gonna experiment with typography, so once I have it done I’m definitely going to share it with you in a new article.

By the way, don’t forget to send us your mural designs to our Flickr group so we can share it with the rest of our visitors, see you around!.