I Blame Zoom

This is the formerly blank wall in my dining room, and all of the art supplies covering the table:

That wall now has art on it.  Why?  Well, because my friends in Seattle have been chatting with me via the Zoom program, and several of them were using something called a virtual background -- instead of seeing them in their living room, for example, it would appear as if they were in Middle Earth or outer space.  Cool!  I wanted one, too!

Alas, my cheap laptop was unable to handle the virtual background program. Sniff.  But then I had an idea.  Since I normally do these virtual chats in the dining room, and there was a blank wall there, I could paint my own background. Ha!

So I found this promotional picture from my current favorite thing, the Amazon/BBC miniseries Good Omens:

After printing out an 8"  x 10" copy, I marked off 1/2" grid lines:

And then I drew 3" square grids over the wall, and drew what was in each small square into each large square, for a 4 x 5 foot mural:

It may have been a tad ambitious, because murals require acrylic paint, which I don't typically work with, but I decided that if it didn't turn out, I could always paint over it and no one would ever know.

I tested out the new paints I'd bought on something small -- there's an apple in the top of the tree:

That turned out well, so next I tackled the background colors, which did NOT go on smoothly. The large areas of paint were streaky, so I had to figure out a way to blend them.  After trying a sponge and a larger brush, neither of which worked, I discovered what did work:  letting the first layer dry, and then rubbing a thinner layer of the same color over the top with a paper towel.  Whew.

Next I tackled the Earth, which also proved quite tricky, and which involved more paper towel work, and several different layering techniques.  I edited out the extra stuff on the edges to simplify it, but it still took two days to get it to look good.

Next, I painted shoes -- and I was very happy with the results.  The character on the left is an angel named Aziraphale, and he wears spats:

On the right is the demon Crowley, who wears snakeskin boots:

Then I finally tackled the faces, which took another two days.

Hands are very hard to draw or paint, but I think I got them done fairly well.

I"m not finished yet -- I painted the tree and snake, and started on the clothes:

I hope to finish it within the next two or three days.  And then I'll have something fun behind me during virtual Zoom chats!

Or just a fun mural to look at over breakfast.