Sunburst Mural Tutorial

​This week, I painted a sunburst mural on our garage door.  And the process was really easy!  I didn't tape anything off, because I've been painting a long time (between working in theater and as a housepainter, both of my hands are super steady), but I'll include a few steps for using tape too!  This mural really made our basic garage door seem so much better.  It fits our colorful style and it fits right in with our colorful, mural-celebrating neighborhood.  I'm glad to join the club!

Setting It Up 

​The first step is plotting out where the paint lines will be.  This is easy with a string line and a brick, but a chalk line would also work really well for the straight edges.  I used a brick from our backyard and tied a piece of yarn around it.  From there, I put duct tape on the cap of a dry erase marker.  Then, I was able to use the brick and the tape to create straight lines to trace with the marker, or I attached the marker cap to the bottom of the marker and created arcs with the brick as the center of my compass.

I liked using dry erase, because the bold lines were easy to see and easy to remove if I needed to erase them. On the garage door, they didn't wipe off, but they did clean off just fine with a damp rag.  On drywall, a light trace with pencil would work well too.  With the surface of the door being less than smooth, I did have to go back in with the marker and fine-tune any lumps or weirdness in the linework.  Starting with a smooth line with the marker made it a lot easier to maintain smooth lines with the paint.  ​

Color Selection

​For choosing the colors, I started by selecting the colors most common in our house and our backyard.  Since I use a lot of teals and greens, I knew these would work well on here.  One of these is the leftover green from when I tested a green on the garage a few years ago.  I've used it inside since then as well, and I'm glad to find a place to keep it when I repaint the garage to match the house.  I chose a yellow-orange to create a warm focal point.  I love that it doesn't read too yellow or too orange.  It's very balanced with the colors that are in the mural.  

With the other colors, I also decided to use bright tones instead of muted or neutral ones.  Since this is an accent piece, it made sense to keep it bright and cheery.  On an exterior, colors also read very differently than they do on an interior, so these feel very bright.  To keep these from leaning bold over bright, I stayed in the middle or darker half of the color card.  

My color selections are all from Sherwin Williams mixed in Valspar DuraMax.  I've used this paint before on exteriors, and I've been really happy with the results, so I figured I'd keep using what I knew was already working.  Plus, I had some of one color left over from an old project.

The colors I used were:
Yarrow 6669
Gleeful 6709
Haven 6437
Freshwater 6774
Bosporus 6503​

Process

​For me, I just used the colors where I planned when I plotted them out.  I followed the lines with a different brush for each color, and overlapped the lines onto the marker just a tiny bit to make sure the lines would be crisp at the end.  Using a different brush for each color, I saved them in baggies in the fridge between coats. For my favorite brush, click here!  

With using tape, this can also help verify drawn lines came out straight.  This is great for the straight lines, but can be tricky for the curves.  If you're using tape, it's essential to check the "recoat" time on the paint color that is being covered, otherwise it could pull the paint from the surface before it's fully bonded.  The process with tape is to use the color that is covered first.  This helps to fill any gaps beneath the tape with the base color, and can avoid dribble that can get beneath the tape.  Then paint the desired color on top of that!  

No matter if the technique uses tape or does not, this was a simple upgrade to our garage with absolutely huge impact!  All it really took was $100 in paint, a set of brushes, and some random selections from the house.  I'm really happy with the result, and it's definitely igniting some pride in ownership over this garage.