My Outdoor Mural

Every blue moon I stray from gardening to bring something fresh to my website/blog. This week I bring you that which has preoccupied me in the best way for the past six weeks. I am sharing my outdoor mural with you. Not out of pride, oh no, but as something fun in the garden, something different. This process of being creative in a totally different way is so healthy for me.

I love murals and appreciate the creativity on such a large scale. I'm no mural artist; however, I am an art person with a degree in art history and a minor in studio practice. Although I participated in a couple group-effort murals, I have never made one solo. The methods used here were my own and probably not what professional muralists do, though I learned a lot doing this and if I were to ever make something similar I have a few tricks and lessons up my sleeve.

So, if you are strictly interested in gardening, perhaps skip this post or just follow along for fun.

This is the representative "before" photo. 

The original idea was a mural honoring our kitty Lucy who died in 2018. I was going to paint a small mural on the window side of the shed:

Over this window. Here was the sketch with a few ideas:

The whole idea was Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds, as she was named after the famous Beatles song. It was to be kind of silly, a little cartoonish, colorful and fun. But painting an outdoor mural requires dry conditions, not too hot, not too cold, and extra time. Those things never aligned for me and it didn't happen on this south side of my garden shed as planned. Then Hobbes, Lucy's littermate brother, died in December 2024.

The two round branch wreaths are their graves. We buried them together under the oak tree next to the blue shed. I realized my mural would now have to be redesigned to include both of them. It took on a different spirit after Hobbes' passing.

Enter my personal hero. Earlier this summer FM cleared the back of the shed of its shelves and garden pots and painted it black so I could indeed start on this new two-kitty mural project when I had time. Having time or not, I was inspired and still saddened from the loss of my mother and both kitties. I poured the sadness and love into this project, making it a priority.

I still wanted a Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds theme, but had to somehow incorporate both kitties into the mural. I really worked through the design as I painted it, it wasn't set 100% in stone at this point. I wanted both night-time sky and sunset marmalade skies, so decided to do a push/pull with the two. Also a push/pull between this world and the next. I decided columns in front with a background of night sky. First I had to determine the center of the mural to measure out columns. Working with chalk I laid in the first of the design.

My first paint on the project, I added fiery reds of a sunset sky.

Fading to sunset peachy colors, the sunset marmalade sky was laid in as were the tangerine trees, also referenced in the song. While I never officially added tangerines to the trees, that's what they came to represent.

Trees needed a place to land so hills and valleys were laid in. The first chalk impressions of the kitties were sketched out. I started adding a blue background, the first coat reads as dark purple against the original black paint.

Filling in the green hills and trees.

I made varying shades of green on the hills and I added a river, referencing the line in the song "picture yourself in a boat on a river'. I also added the first base coat of brown for the kitties. I originally intended on using an opaque projector I own to get the proportions of the kitties correct. Unfortunately it didn't work so I had to freehand the whole thing - a challenging and time-consuming task to do on a large scale. You can see some of the changes I made to both kitties. There were a lot of corrections because of the freehand nature of it all. Plus, the texture of the shed itself is challenging creating bumps and gaps in the paint surface that are difficult to work around, often requiring several strokes to cover one small area. The paint I used, standard acrylics for canvas painting, were absorbed by the surface so several layers were often required. 

After the kitty fixes and adding dots to the rolling green hills for a surreal effect.

After a second layer of blue paint. Much better, more like what I envisioned.

After the addition of swirling cosmic clouds and a few stars. The swirls add some movement.

Texture in the marmalade skies gives it a little more dimension.

Here I began adding stripes and dots to the kitties' fur.

The color of the kitties was too dark so I had to adjust it and paint over my details with a lighter color.

That's better, a little more golden warmth in the fur.

I added a river of stars swirling from one side to another around the kitties. Now it feels like they are playing among the stars, the diamonds of the sky.

I added a moon per FM's suggestion and laid in areas where I wanted flowers that grow so incredibly high.

I added a halo effect around the moon and added color to the poppies which were very frustrating to paint.

The scaffolding temporarily removed so I can work on the square in the lower left. This was a panel FM placed after squirrels chewed through to access inside the shed. He installed a metal sheet and a piece of plywood for a permanent solution. As my original idea for a mural included a banner that read Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds and I realized such a banner would look kind of corny on this mural, I decided to say those words on the panel, making it like an illuminated manuscript (an art form I really like).

Squatting down to 8" above the ground to do a detailed illuminated manuscript-style bit of painting was not my most lucid moment. In the end it's a little crooked and the lettering is funky, but it's fine.

Working on the capital letters and a general layout. The peacock represents immortality as in medieval times it was thought that the peacock's flesh would not die. Also the feathers were like the eyes of god. The flowers he sits on are catnip, of course. There is generally a lot of symbolism in illuminated manuscripts.

A lot of tweaking of the lettering that were very frustrating at a horizontal position so low to the ground. The bumble bee below the word diamonds is for Hobbes whose nickname was Big Bee. Plus he loved watching bumble bees in the garden, an endearing memory.

Details

The scaffolding came back so I could add hanging stars from the top, adding to the theatrical feel of the mural and helping to tie it together horizontally.

Pretty much the last thing I painted were the kitties' eyes and whiskers, bringing them to life.

Of course, I wanted kaleidoscope eyes.

A few details

Showing the south side where the original mural was going to be painted.

As seen from a slight distance.

I think I'll plant a few small grasses and catnip at the base next year.

There it is, six weeks of my life in one wacky, very funny (it makes us smile) mural. We literally say hello to Lucy and Hobbes when we come out and look at it.

It was a colorful job, painted with acrylic paint, bunches of brushes and a lot of love.

Hobbes and Lucy, we love you, our stardust kitties in the sky.

Thank you for indulging me, it was fun going in a different direction this time. More garden posts to come.

That's a wrap for this week at Chickadee Gardens. Thank you so much for reading and commenting, we do love hearing from you. Happy gardening, happy creating.