Custom Hand Painted Mural at “Pixie Palace”

I was asked to compose and paint a mural that personified a beautiful vacation destination named “Pixie Palace” located in Orange County, California.

The property’s theme is based on elements borrowed from the adventures of Peter Pan, and the homes name was derived from a play on Peter’s spirited sidekick “Tinker Bell”.

The first step was to illustrate a concept. I did this in Adobe Illustrator. The lettering was based on the font named “Cosmopolitan Script“. It was the closest to an example of lettering my client had placed on her idea board when designing the location’s interior.

The color choices where taken from other elements found in the house.

Since I did not need a lot of paint, I though these spray paint options made by Rust-oleum would work nicely.

Specifically the fluorescent pink. We wanted pop, and this can didn’t disappoint!

I was worried that they would dry back and not be as brilliant as what had been been seen on screen, but ended up being really happy with the color test.

The next step was to allow dusk to fall and project an image of my Adobe Illustrator file on to the wall prescribed for the mural.

Once I had the stencil sized to the space, I outlined elements in white chalk. The chalk acted as a mask when filling in the defined space by hand.

When I arrived the next morning, I experienced a bit of delay.

A crew was hired to trim the overhang from the trees in the adjacent yard. Once the tree trimming crew completed, and evacuated their trimmings, I was able to get back to work.

I laid the base white coat using bright white paint made for masonry, stucco, and brick. This paint is thick and dense. Perfect for covering any underlying color or surface imperfections.

I found the best applicator to be standard kitchen sponge typically used for dishwashing.

The absorbent side worked very well for filling in and the scrubbing side allowed for applying a more refined edge.

I applied the color in stages. Starting with yellow (the lightest), I sprayed a bit of paint into a container, then saturated the sponge and quickly applied.

Spray paint drys fast. Spraying only the amount needed per application is the best practice, otherwise the paint will cure before your next application.

Once all the yellow parts were filled in, I moved to the bright pink. Being a fluorescent color, it is very bright, but takes multiple coats to get the the density I wanted. On first application it’s semi-opaque, and I wanted a solid tone appearance.

Finally I moved to the darkest color in the palette, purple. Being this was a standard paint with a built in primer, it covered seams well and the final results looked like this.