I’ve always wanted to paint a mural and so while staying at friend’s house recently while petsitting, I asked if I could paint a wall in her basement gym corner to drastically improve the space as my first run at doing this kind of project.
She gave me free reign (although she did see the inital concept before I did anything) and the result does exactly what the intended purpose was—to improve a dark, cave-like corner to make home workouts a little more inviting.
before:
a few mock ups throughout the process:
the initial (very rough) concept which was the only thing i showed my friend… bless her for trusting me
but first, i had to prime this crumbling brick wall which had seen better days…
after i painted the background, i went back to my iPad to do a more specific mock up of the black details and played with some quotes.
note: i didn’t have access to a projector so this had to be estimated by eye…i love details but because of this, i kept the details to a minimum.
the change from “you got this” to “f*ck it, i’ll try” was strategic. when we say “you got this” and then we fail, it makes us feel, well, like a failure. when we say, “f*ck it…” it is more likely that we’ll be okay with whatever the end result happens to be. when we’re okay with failure, we’re more willing to try again and few succeed at anything without at first failing.
after the first layer of the plant was painted (it took a couple layers and touch ups because of the state of the brick and i wanted the lines to be imperfect thickness), i went back to plan the quotes and placement more specifically.
after:
when lifting here this is typically the wall we face—so i wanted something on this wall to be able to use as a good “focal point” as this is often something Olympic weightlifters do. the “little by little” text does just this.
this quote in particular has stuck with me for years because it means you don’t necessarily need to make a ton of progress at once… just little bits at a time and eventually those little bits add up to be a lot.
