A few weeks ago, I got a great call from my latest client Jake, who wanted to do something special for his sister. She is expecting her third child (and first son) soon, and Jake wanted to surprise her by completely re-doing the nursery. As part of this nursery makeover, Jake had an airplane/sky theme in mind and wanted a mural to really make the space something mom and baby would both love.
Being close to my own sisters, I was excited to help Jake make his vision come together – and to make his gift to his sister as special as he wanted.
When we met at his sister’s house to check out the space, Jake had loose ideas of incorporating clouds, an airplane and the baby’s name (“Jamian”), but nothing specific. With his thoughts, I did a quick sketch on the spot showing the basic layout we ended up using – and he loved it.
The next step was to do my usual “concept sketch” – where I do a scale version of the final mural in the actual colors I will be using. We went through a couple of iterations with different colors, but ended up going back to my first version, below:
With the plan in hand, I was ready to start in the room – but not until Jake installed a lock to keep his sister out and the surprise safe. Of course, she was fully aware that some guy was coming every day with boxes full of paint – so I guessed she had some idea of what was going on. Once I had the mural almost finished, I realized the large scale left too much empty space in the middle, so I added and extra plane.
The day I finished up, Jake stopped by that night and was so thrilled with the end result, he had to share it with his sister – who was so happy with it she cried!
Below is the final result and some detail shots
Enjoy!
Jason
The final mural
Mountains/trees detail
Small plane detail
Big plane detail