Mural Painting in Rogers Park

My pal Kent and I are painting a mural in Rogers Park. Here is how we did it. First, you should clean the walls with muriatic acid. Then, we primed the walls with two coats of masonry primer/sealant.

We had the mural printed out in black and white in actual size on cheap paper. We traced the back of this paper with compressed charcoal.

Then we traced the front of the mural with thick graphite pencils and it left a charcoal ghost behind.

The bottom half of the transfer process. Measure carefully. Use a level and painters tape.

We went over the charcoal ghost with sharpie markers. The sharpie bleeds through paint, so the lines show if you go over them.

Painting (back to front).

Almost done. We will touch up the bottom later and add a black trim around the entire mural when the other sections are finished.

Blocking in another section. This is a drawing of the old Granada Theater in Rogers Park.

A beach scene.

We will paint this in tomorrow because it was raining today. Paint misbehaves in the rainy weather.

Back the next day to paint.

A view of from the train of the old Granada Theater (torn down in the 70's or 80's, I think). We have a little more work to do on the outlines.

This is where we were on the end of day 3 of painting.

This was the end of day 5 of painting. We put a black trim around the mural. 

When we finished painting, about 8 days of work, we coated the entire mural in a polyurethane based sealant. It goes on milky and dries clear.  

We returned the next week, to coat the mural in an anti-graffiti coating.

We special ordered this sacrificial anti-graffiti coating from the Home Depot. If someone tags the mural, we can remove the tag (along with this coating) with pressure and hot water. Then a new sacrificial coat must be applied. 

My favorite part of the mural might be the electrical conduit that we had to paint over in the top right corner of this picture. I love little things like that.