A Mural Step by Step

The room's color was a gray green and was kept as the undercoat for the mural. A gazebo I saw at the Rothschild Mansion in France inspired the one in this mural.

Next, the balustrade and columns were first drawn in with watercolor pencil and then given a flat base coat color of light gold.

Cream highlights and lavender shadows are added to the columns and balustrade, and the landscape is beginning to be filled in.

More of the landscape is added and the architecture begins receiving glazes to make it look like aged stone. The pathway is delineated over a base of earth tone shades to make it look like a cobblestone path. At the wall and ceiling break, a board is painted
on top of the columns and is the start of the wrought iron atrium structure.

Next I painted in the sky, shading from lightest at the horizon, darkening as it went up. Tall bushes were added at the sides and a short row of shrubs behind the balustrade.

The sky was painted next. After completing the sky, the wrought iron grill work and vines were painted.

Notice that the location of the beams at the junction of wall and ceiling planes helps to give the illusion that you really are looking at the sky through an atrium ceiling,which helps the ceiling disappear.

Finished mural.

The room the mural is in is the client's sitting room retreat, just off of her foyer.