So today I started my very first mural. I have been asked to paint a mural in the bathroom at the horse barn at YMCA Camp Nissokone. This is my first mural and the biggest project I’ve undertaken. It is very exciting, and a little terrifying.

I started by taking pictures of each wall and using the markup tools on my phone to plan out my design. Because of all the irregular surfaces, this worked better than the initial sketches I made before coming up to camp.

Next I started to sketch my design on the walls with posca markers. This will give ma a template of where to paint, as well as show the ultimate design for if I need to finish this project on another trip.

I didn’t want to start painting this afternoon as the bugs had already started to swarm around my light and it was only going to get worse. I’m going to start tomorrow after breakfast and work straight through until lunch. Then I’ll see how long it’ll take for the paint to dry for the next layer. I used this paint for the art and lemonade sign and the big pear painting and those both dried pretty quickly. But they were both outside and the bathroom doesn’t get much circulation. It was pretty muggy when I was working today.

Since I wasn’t painting this evening, I did practice sketching horses. The ones I drew on the wall, were a little off proportion. The top one looks like a mule though and since there is one at the camp it works. The bottom one is a bit long in the body or short in the head. I don’t usually draw horses from the side, I’ve realized. It was fun filling my sketchbook with horse drawings. I felt like I was a middle schooler again.

Is there a big project you can undertake that will challenge and inspire your creativity in new ways?