I had a blast painting this large floral wall mural at Heritage Park with the Henry County Master Gardeners this month!

The Master Gardeners reached out to me recently to create a community mural for the pollinator garden they’re creating next to the Nolan House. This piece of artwork I had illustrated for another call for art fit the bill so perfectly:

The really exciting thing about this project was being able to project manage it as a community mural!

It sounds like it could be a super crazymaking experience – wrangling a bunch of novice painters in slinging paint on a 9′ tall by 29′ long wall… But it was such a positive and fun experience for everyone involved!

The first day, I arrived to chalk the art onto the wall and mask off some areas with tape. I also put a plastic shopping bag around an existing bird nest. Then, as people showed up on day 2 I would teach simple painting techniques and pass out paint colors for various areas on the wall.

Day 2, we continued to focus on the big solid colors for our community mural. Sometimes murals take on a life of their own as they progress… and I shockingly realized that in buying quarts of 9 colors of paint, where I should have more than enough paint for painting on a wall, even a textured wall like this one… That wall was almost eating up how much paint it took to get really great coverage!

When things like that come up in a mural, sometimes it’s a case of this is something very specific we have to stay exactly to the original art. This more graphic depiction of flowers with sprinkles of smaller flowers and bits and pieces of happy dots of colors… there was a lot more freedom to adjust on the fly.

On Day 3 of painting this large floral wall mural at Heritage Park in McDonough, we started outlining more shapes instead of the plan to paint them on top of the background navy. We also game-planned the best uses of color going forward, and together realized if we changed the background color of the door, our running out of navy problem would be solved!

This is what our floral community mural looked like on Day 5. This 254 sq. ft. mural came together on the wall in straight-up record time! We didn’t even paint on Day 5 – we just got together in the morning that day to apply the protective layer I add to all my mural art.

I’m so proud of what our team accomplished in really, only 3 days of actual painting. I chalk it up to years of art directing and project management experience, clear communication with the group on assembling volunteers that wanted to learn some simple painting techniques, and yes, even my years of experience as an Assistant Manager at Blockbuster Video back in the day. Lol?

I’d love to paint a mural for you, too! Here’s where you can see my mural artist portfolio.

Like this art? Bring it home!