One of my favorite customers reached out with a request that honestly made me nervous. She wanted me to paint a mural in her son's bedroom—a combination of a basketball court and football field with whatever else I could dream up. The catch? I'm terrible at painting walls in my own house, and I'm a messy artist. The thought of bringing my messiness into someone else's home was nerve-wracking.
But I couldn't say no. I sketched out some rough concepts and presented two options: 2D or 3D. Honestly, I wasn't entirely sure how I'd pull off the 3D technique yet, but I was determined to figure it out.
Finding Inspiration in My Art Background
Then it hit me—I remembered a project from my color theory class in college. We had to camouflage a box into a wall, which sounds backwards, but it actually trained my eye in a really useful way. Instead of making something pop out, we were pushing items into the background using shading and color to create an optical illusion. I realized I could apply that same principle here: create the illusion of a 3D stadium by wrapping the perspective onto the side walls and creating perspective by angling the floor and stadium inwards.
Bringing the Design to Life
I started by creating the design using Canva for the logos and Procreate to hand-draw the other elements. Then came the fun part—projecting the image onto the wall to sketch out the main shapes and letters. As I worked, I constantly stepped back to check the perspective and make sure the three-dimensional aspect (the stadium angling back) lined up perfectly with the optical illusion created by the field goal and basketball goal painted on the two side walls.
After several days of careful work, checking angles, and refining details, I was able to send the family photos while they were heading back from spring break and they loved it!
I am so glad they trusted me with this project! It was challenging but so fun to test my capabilities painting large scale and using new materials and techniques.
0 comments