AJ Does a Mario Bros Mural

Feature from AJ - Thursday, 22 January 2009 @ 6:21pm

My wife and I are expecting our first baby in March. Part of the whole “nesting” process is painting the baby’s room. It is something that all expectant parents have to do. It goes hand in hand with buying a pram and a cot, sleepless nights and changing nappies. We discussed at length what we should do with the room. Initially we were just going to paint the whole thing blue, but we pretty quickly decided that that would just be boring. We then thought it’d be cute to get some large wall stickers of maybe Winnie the Pooh, or perhaps Bob the Builder or something. We then came across these Nintendo themed wall stickers, and we were sold!

We’re both gamers, and we figure there is a fair chance our baby boy will also be a gamer. A Mario themed wall seemed like a logical thing to do. We had two issues with the wall decals though. First, they’re expensive. Second, they’re actually kinda scary. The oldschool ones are blocky pixellated things, and the fang filled goombas from New Super Mario Bros would probably give the average toddler nightmares! By this stage, however, we were already sold on the idea of a Mario theme.

I first became interested in doing a bedroom mural when I was a kid. My cousin was a big Pink Floyd fan. He had one wall of his room done up like the cover of Dark Side of the Moon, and the other all bricked up like The Wall. If that wasn’t enough, his ceiling was a giant Australian flag. It’s a shame that whoever bought the house after they moved out probably painted over the whole lot. That room was inspiration for my first mural when I was about 14. My brothers and I, inspired by The Wall, drew up and painted a semi 3D brick wall with a giant hole out into space. In the centre of the whole thing was an optical illusion and a heap of glow in the dark stars. It was pretty cool for 3 kids. I’m still amazed that our mum even let us do it. The most amusing thing is that the only black paint we could find was Kill Rust.... probably not the ideal choice.

A mural my brothers and I painted in about 1990

Given my assurance that it could be done, my wife suggested painting a version of a SMB background. Primarily, she wanted clouds with smiles and big green hills with eyes (just a little scary in my opinion). She couldn't remember exactly which game had the particular hills and clouds she wanted, but she knew what she wanted!

A lot of surfing the web looking at screenshots, and a lot work in Photoshop eventually led to a preliminary design which we both agreed looked pretty damned cool. Even at this stage, we weren’t fully committed to doing the project. We knew we want to do all four walls, and we knew it was going to be a tough job. Having done a mural before, I was confident that we could do it.

Initial Photoshop design

One day, I got out a pencil, ruler and laser level and started drawing. Half way through drawing, my wife came up with a picture that her sister had which had rays of light coming from clouds and a new type of ground that looked a lot friendlier than the standard SMB bricks. Version 2 of the design was done straight onto the wall.

Pencil drawing on wall

Over the following two weeks we spent every night and weekend masking and painting. The project required six $6 sample pots from Bunnings and about 7 rolls of masking tape and all up cost us just a little under $100... and that’s including paint brushes!

The following picture was after the first day painting on Christmas Eve. The masking took most of the time. My wife painting all the green, and I painted the blue. I foolishly started painting before I had done all the masking... I went and added the masking before doing the edges.

First lot of paint goes on

After recovering from Christmas and Boxing day, we got straight back into painting. By the end of the 27th I’d finished painting the light blue and had begun masking up the darker blue.

Light blue done, starting on the dark blue

The weekend saw us finishing off the rest of the sky, and the beginning of masking up the green hills. It doesn’t look like a lot of progress over two days, but keep in mind that masking takes several hours. We also had to leave 2-3 hours between coats, and had to wait over night to do the next lot of masking.

Sky just about finished

Proof that it IS actually our work!

By the end of the 29th, the blue had all dried allowing us to mask the green and finish the remainder of the first coat. The next day (the 30th) and another coat of green.... still needs a third though!

Second coat of green done

New years eve and the green is finally done. At this point we also started the third and fourth wall (one of which has a cupboard, and the other a window...so not as much work).

The green is finally done!

New Years Day, we finished the blue on the window side of the room. The hills got their eyes, and we started work on the ground.

The hills have eyes!

A late night on the 3rd had most of the black borders done around the hills. The clouds got faces. The first coat of light brown was added to the ground.

First coat of brown \ clouds get faces

One of the most time consuming parts of the job we did over the weekend of the 4/5th of January. The brown stripes took about 3 hours to mask, and about the same amount of time to paint. It was worth the effort though as it really adds something to the overall look.

Stripes!

At times we thought we’d never get it finished. The green for the hills took 3 coats simply because the colour was so dark that it made it difficult to get an even coat. Masking the lines took almost twice the time it took to do the painting. The hardest part however was last; doing the black borders.

Wall 1 - finished!

Given my wife is 7 months pregnant, she did a pretty good job looking after all the low painting, which left me to do all the tricky ladder work. Each day required more masking tape, and more patience, but each day was rewarded with a new area finished.

Wall 2 - finished!

So there it is! Our holiday project in a nutshell. The drawing was done on the 21stof December, the first paint went on the wall Christmas Eve, and we finished the last of the painting on the 7th of January. Not a bad couple of weeks work! I have a bit of "How-To" guide coming in the next week or so, and I hope that we can inspire a few folks to get out the paint and come up with their own masterpiece!