Paintgirl Chronicles # 3: Designing and Finishing!

For those who remember, my walls got painted on October 13! I'm just posting this more than 1.5 months late. Apologies, apologies. For the new smarties who're now reading my blog, I utilized my Autumn break to paint two walls in my room. All by myself (helped by my family, of course). Thanks, I know I do really cool stuff. 8|

This is the third and the final part of the series (you can see the previous parts here and here). I mean, I was so exhausted when it was finally done, that I had no energy left to post about it. It's okay. Even though Paintgirl has amazing powers, she can run out of them sometimes. And then college re-opened and you know the rest. Writer's block, etc etc. Anyway, coming to the awesome part, I love the new walls. Not only are they painted in pretty shades of pink, we designed a tree at the intersection of those walls too! I can certainly certify it with a guarantee stamp that painting three coats each on two walls over two-three days won't make you feel as tired and exhausted as painting a tree for three hours straight would.

Paints and colors: We used oil paints, the kind usually reserved for painting on wooden and iron surfaces. Don't ask why. The Paint bhaiya said they'd be good to use and I could just trust his judgment. It was fun to work with, true, but since they are 'hard' and thick, they take more efforts. Plus, you'd have to use thinner brushes for painting leaves and outlining and the details, so it'd take even more time and effort. But I think I get why he suggested oil paints. They stick well and don't leak, which the normal paints would have done. Lesson to be learned: Always trust those who are making their living through a certain trade. They do know it well. ^_^ 

Enamel paints and stainers

Coming to colors, we had black and white enamel paints, along with brown and green stainers (as you can see in the above picture). These stainers can be mixed in the white enamel in any quantity you prefer, depending upon the shade of the color you want. For example, I had two different containers for light brown (with a little less amount of stainer mixed in white enamel) and one for a darker brown. Similarly, two shades of green (considering a mono green shade for all leaves would be boring!). 

Making the design: If it isn't too complex a design, you can straightaway stroke with your brush! But if you have any sliver of doubt and don't want to waste your three-days' hard work labor by making a wrong stroke, you may make a pencil design first as a base for the paint and brush. I tired making it too, but then my childhood's awesome creative avatar took over and went beyond the pencil stencil and made strokes on its own. I knew it's going good when mom entered after about an hour and exclaimed an appreciative and incredible "Wow". :D Although, you would always need someone else to stand at a distance and tell, because being on a ladder and being inches away from the design, you wouldn't really know about the overall structure. 

I made the tree trunk using the light colored brown, and then the branches, adding light green leaves at intervals. Then I mixed more stainer to have a darker green and made dark green half-boundaries on the leaves. The previous day on impulse, I had got some pretty golden paint and on another impulse, painted the other half of the leaves' border with gold. It looked quite good! I was exhausted and finally slumped back, not wanting to do any more, abandoning my plans of making those concentric circle designs on the trunk. My mom, with a little help from dad the next morning, secretly put an outline on the trunk and branches, making it look perfect and complete. What-e-morning surprise! :D

Overall! :D

                                 

Finishing: That was the last day of my holidays and we didn't have any time to do more, so the day was spent cleaning the floors, and other places where random paint was spotted. A few days later the bookshelf was put back and the room returned to it's part-messy normalcy. And then I had a lot of awesome gifts from awesome friends that would be framed and put up on the dark colored wall, which would make this look even more cool! :D

^_^

Basically, this is how it looks now. What do you think of it? ;)