A Mural for my Cat

Just over two years ago my partner, Dan, and I moved into our first house with no renters restrictions on decorating - music to my ears. I am a visual creative, my environment impacts my mental health a stupid amount and I feel most comfortable with dark walls and a thousand dim warm lights around the room (which Dan complains takes half an hour to turn off every night). But, we have basically no money for renovations so it's a slow burn on a very tight budget.

Satan, the cat, is a chonky boy. He's 13, an indoor only killing machine, evil wizard

trapped in the form of a round floof, doomed to forever quest for comfort and his next meal as though he's had neither for 200yrs. My sweet, handsome, dickhead, baby boy. I came into his life after he had already been birthed and raised by a single father for 10yrs. I reject step-mother titles, I am Mother and his biological father, Dan, is now the spare human that lives with us.

After a couple of years of finding out what works best where, the cat's feeding area has been in the exact same place in the entrance hall, outside the kitchen. Because I love my adopted feline son, I want him to have a defined space and I needed a silly little project to take away some of the magnolia that surrounds me - enter the idea to paint a mural where he eats. The resources included: no money, old acrylic tubes, a sample pot, POSCA pens, small brushes, and sheer audacity.

I photographed the section of wall above Satan's feeding bowl and got to work on the design. I've always liked vintage advertisement, especially when it's faded in a rustic-industrial style. Acrylic paint is water based, which would allow me to wash off any mistakes, but I didn't want the base to come off with it and I hoped to blend the mural into the rest of the wall when we eventually could afford to do it. The paint sample was a midnight navy, which I picked out ages ago as potential for the entrance walls, so this was my only good choice for the base without spending any more money. I spent a couple of afternoons on the design until we were both happy with it, before printing a few sizes to test in the area, this is what I came up with -->

Getting it on the Wall

Here, Satan is inspecting my work and approving the size and position for the mural. The sample pot surprisingly covered quite a large section of the wall, so I went large with the printout and left it there for a few days to see if it pulled too much attention as I went about my life. I loved it. It brought me so much joy over the test days that I got so excited to start.

I originally tried the old carbon transfer method of pencil tracing the design on the back of the paper and etching from the front, but it wasn't taking to the newly-painted wall. Thankfully, I had a rudimentary projector that uses your phone screen, glass cylinder, and rubber band in a box. After a lot of futzing around and changing my phone settings for the screen to stay on for 30 minutes, I got an only-slightly fuzzy projection of the design onto the wall to trace over. It worked, but it wasn't as clean as I wanted, but it was free so...

Painting

The next hurdle, I had no red paint. Devastating. But the determination to do this whole project using what I had was stubborn, so I tried this pink/purple colour scheme for the background instead. After the first coat, I hated it but I continued to add the base colours for the rest of the design. These were all straight out of the tube colours, no mixing, other than the grey. It wasn't looking good at all, but I had to trust the process. I wasn't about to buy new supplies for this small and silly project that may not last more than a couple years. I was starting to feel a little defeated cos I hadn't tried anything like this before and winging it was proving to me that I had no idea what I was doing.

Going back to colour theory basics, I knew that orange compliments blue, and I had orange paint. With the navy base, blue fish, and grey tones, it made sense to change the background to orange shades, so that was the new plan. This was the right choice, other than buying the red and dusty pink paint that would match my original design, plus I just like orange a lot more than I like pink.

Immediately I was happier. I warmed up the scrolls and darkened the fish to compliment the orange background more. Adding the yellow noodles and pink nose started to really bring the piece to life, the excitement came back. The edges of the mural weren't matching up with the vision, but this could be dealt with later.

Outline changes everything. That black defining border to every shape and detail has the biggest impact to an illustration, which is why the absence of it in certain styles also has a huge effect. My colouring here was far too messy to call it intentional, besides the lettering in the scroll was going to be black, so it was time to get detailing.

The Final Touches

Using a black POSCA pen to create as clean a line as possible, I filled in the faint impressions I could still see of the lettering and outlined. It made everything pop and confirmed the change to an orange background in my head - it just looks so much better! As you can see, Satan was happy enough to eat in front of it, and I took that to mean he loved it. Is the lettering perfect? No. Could I do anything to change it once it was done?

I can't confidently say yes. POSCA pens are a more concentrated and pigmented distribution of acrylic paint vs brushing, the pen nib also gives you far more control. I wasn't prepared to wipe off any of the black, especially to such tiny amounts, on a light background that was brushed on, because it would wash off that scroll colour and I would never get the same smooth application again. It would be blotchy, so I accepted slightly goofy lettering to protect the finish of the scroll.

From the inception of this project, I knew the edges were not going to be straight and clean. This was supposed to be a playful experience and clean straight edges just sounded too boring for me. Now, because past me had no foresight to save any of the sample pot to fix the edging, I did end up breaking my spending rule and bought another £2 sample pot. Using a sponge, I blotted the edges to create this vignette look. The goal was for this to look like a mid-century paper advertisement pasted on a wall that had naturally distressed and faded over time. Clearly, I need to practice that technique more because I don't think I pulled it off. I do like it though, and it does cover up a multitude of sins from the painting process.

This was a fun little personal touch I wanted to add to the house. I'm not bothered about painting over it when we move, walls are supposed to be painted and papered, it can always be covered or removed. The cost and effort are the real reasons to not do something and this was such a small piece of wall that I didn't care. Overall this piece of art will bring us more joy and giggles than if it were blank. Could I have painted or printed it as a frame to hang instead? Sure, but this was way more fun, quicker, and cheaper.

I may still add to it - it's missing the drop shadow and rim detail on the bowl from the original design, but I'll let it sit like this for a while. This was completed over a few months, picking it up every couple weeks when I had that crafty urge take over my bones. It's not perfect, I'm not a fine artist, but it is stinkin' cute and you can't argue that.

What do you think, have I created a bigger problem for future me when we move, or would you do something like this too? If you're more skilled in painting than me and have any tips, I'm 100% open to that in the comments.

K, Love Ya, Bye!

V x