A Little Bit of the Ultraviolence

So how do you paint a mural on a 20 foot wall? I'm glad you asked...

A blank canvas...in this case a really big wall. My living room has 20 foot ceilings. That's a whole lot of blank space. So even if you were to hang a 70 inch TV you would still have a gigantic blank wall with a TV on it.

Things you will need for this project:

Artist paintbrushes. They sell these cheap at hardware stores, usually in 5 packs

A plastic cup

Drop Cloth (I use the plastic stuff)

A projector (this one was is from the Geek App. It was $42)

A kick-ass image, such as the Droogs walking through an overpass

Not pictured: a laptop, a pencil, a tape measure, painter's tape, gloss black paint, step ladder, wine glass, red wine, music

My original idea when I moved into my place was to mount a 70 or 80 inch TV in my living room. As I mentioned before, it would still look pretty plain on such a big wall. So I came up with idea to paint a solid color mural on the wall and mount the TV in the middle. A Clockwork Orange struck me as a commentary on everything modern pop culture is...Ultraviolence.

The image was run through Photoshop to obtain the one color silkscreen ready image. You can create shades by by using a technique called halftone, but in this case I only wanted solid color.

As this is a rather large image, the projector couldn't display the entire image at the size I needed. So the easiest solution was to cut the image in half and project the bottom first. After I lined it up how I wanted it, I traced the edges with a pencil. When lining up the top half, I moved the projector to the top of an A frame ladder and traced the upper half.

2 quick things: When cutting the image in half for projecting, leave a bit of overlap. Just a couple of inches will make lining up the second image easier. The second thing is you want to try and have the projector's height to be set to the middle of your projection. The image will warp if you are projecting from lower or higher and then the second image won't line up no matter how you try. For the lower projection the projector was sitting on a box on a chair, the second was sitting on a couple of books on one of the top steps of an A frame ladder. I turned on the projector with it on the floor, measured the height to the top of the image, divided by 2 and set the projector up at that height. For the second projection I added the first measurement to it's half and set it at that height. It worked out close enough to fake the tracing and connect the 2 images.

Mask off the floor with painters tape, then attach the drop cloth with additional tape.

Now pour yourself some wine, put an album on the stereo, and get to painting! Pretty much I stuck to single bottle sessions. One album and one bottle and I would take a picture and call it a night. I wasn't in a rush to finish, and painting is great stress relief (at least to me). Oh, and pour your paint into a plastic cup and fill about half full. Way easier to paint from the cup than the paint can. Less mess too.

Salute, Alex and Droogs. It looks great. Now about that TV...

I decided against it. Instead I bought a smaller one and hung it in my bedroom. After all, when I have guest over I'd rather we not be staring at the idiot box all night. After I furnished the room I just felt it wouldn't be right. The last picture is me and my good friend Ashley so you can get see how big the mural really is.