Heffers children's bookshop mural (or how to paint 6.5 m2 with chalk sticks)

The finished thing. By far the biggest chalk board I have painted to date!

I used string to make grid to blow up the design...

The black chalk area is 3.74m by 1. 75m So I started off by figuring which image of the book to use. I settled for the Elephant spread which is fast becoming my favourite, but Alas! We couldn't have the elephant bottom greeting all the Heffers visitors, so I had to flip the image horizontally. I used a 50cm grid on PS and made it visible and printed a screenshot so I could blow up the image.  It probably took us longer to tape string to mark the grid that it took for the actual drawing. Are you painting the next one? Please feel free to use my PS document as a guide. It has the position of the going out button and the fire alarm and cable, which you may want to keep far from important details!

Thank goodness I had help! This was going to take a while

End of first day, just before the light bulb went...

Getting a bit nearer the point when detail could be added.

I though it was done at the end of day two. At least it will be there for the summer. 

 

Can you spot why I had to come back and finish-finish it?

It is always good practice to put a bit of time and distance between you and your work, so you can assess it more objectively and spot the omissions.

Painting this wall was not a difficult thing to do, but it did consume a while because of the necessity to use small dry chalk only, otherwise it was a piece of cake (think Matilda)!

And the icing on this particular part of the cake was that when I came back to fix that thing that you did notice (no?) I saw Chris Haughton's latest book Don't worry little crab right next to Umbrella in the shop! Not only is Chris the loveliest person, I have been a fan of his books for a long time. And was thus basking in his light!