Murals by Los Angeles Muralist Gabrielle

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Kids Jungle Mural

I did this mural for a nursery and my clients found the template on muralsforkids.com as wall paper but they wanted a “real” mural and hired me.

The jeep driver is a sweet monkey and because he is racing sometimes, his friend the gorilla, needed to wear glasses.

The Zebra is a bit freaked out because of the high speed but the Giraffe just loves it! The snake is having fun in the front. What a fun mural!

• Choose a templateFor the bathroom I got a picture (in this case from the Interior Designer) and I used it as a template;  it was a tropical scene which the client liked a lot.

  Step 2
  Make the draft (design)

You can do a little drawing or use your painting computer programs such as Photoshop. I always take a picture of the blank wall and copy and paste the mural elements into the photograph. For the tropical mural I took some elements of the photo and combined them with other ideas like hibiscus flowers, tropical plants and so on.
I will show you a detailled draft in my next article.

Step 3
Paint the mural
If the mural needs a light coating you would do this first. For the tropical landscape I used a white surface because of the different colors (sky and forest)
Then you do the outlines; I use charcoal – I would not recommend pencil or any other paint.
Fill in hte background colors for the sky and forest, so a foliage green and sky blue which I . Use light colors and systematically add the details. You can do them freehand or project them. For this mural I used the projector only for the plant named bird of paradise in the right corner.

Step 4
The mural’s details would be added at the end, some highlights, deeper tones and little lines here and there. It has to come alive.
After it was finished I sealed the mural with a matt finish to protect it from moisture.