I have been itching to do another mural for Sage's room, now that he is older and could actually choose what he wanted
(I kinda forced him to look at cute Pooh and trees before - you can see the old paint up blog here 4 years ago).
There was not much in the way of deciding - Fossils, all the way.
So, I went from these previous shots.....
To some new ones. Ah, but THIS TIME I had a helper!
Who? ME?!
Yeah, YOU!
Ok, then....Let's get cracking....
I spent a bit prepping out ideas and just what the heck I was going to do and what color scheme to make it. I will not lie - this time taxed my poor artistic brain and skills to the limits!
But I think the overall effect came out pretty well and I was pleased with the results.
So was Sage, and that was the main point.....
So, Onwards to Paint!
Sage busy with retouching the trees to later become rocks...
Missed a spot!
Had to start high to cover the hot air balloon...and brought those sedimentary rock layers all around the room...
Behind the bed is important, too!
Ah, now the part Sage really wanted - His Volcano!
Dad helped in the action as well.
I used a cheat method and basically used all the previous trees as bases for mega-volcano land, so the Hugo-Door-Tree became Hugo-Door-Volcano.
Yup, all those volcanos were trees before...(plus a baby one at the end....)
I had a momentary sigh painting over the blue bridge I spent so long on before, but hey, all art is transitory and I was going to make this next piece worth it (I hoped).
Now for the Cartoon lines to give it perspective and depth...
Can't have a wimpy non-exploding volcano, can we?
Hell, make em ALL erupt!
Yeah, baby!
I knew I needed fossils (which is why I make rock layers), but fossils are harder than actual dinos for me since I needed them to look real and cool at the same time. I was worried since at least I could use cartoon dinos to help me out, but there were not many cartoon fossils out there that were practical - they all looked so complicated to paint!
But I trudged through.
First I painted a base to set them on (so they would be visible and liven up the room a bit from the drab browns all around).
Then the picky part of actually painting in the actual fossils.
Whew, these were not easy, but I soon got the hang of it (once I lowered my 'perfectionist' standards....)
Can you tell what they are?
Sage can - even before I told him!
Let's see....ya got yer: Triceratops, Salamander-ish dino, Velociraptor, Pteradon, Stegasaurus, T-Rex, 2 Ammonites, and a Trilobite (going from top to bottom).
Howd'ya do?
- 
Sage is happy, but hey, I am not done yet!
We gotta make the volcanoes even more cool with, of course, LAVA!
Sage liked this part as well....
I helped him make the rumbling sounds as he painted and he did a good job!
Yeah, ok, ya did good!
Lava spelling out SAGE? A Miracle!
Who did that?
The next part was REALLY a pain. No, I should say not a pain, since it was so cool to see the fossils come to life (so to speak), but it DID take a lot of time and energy to use a marker to outline all the white bones of EACH fossil....
But it was worth it!
My Velo look kinda lame with his overbite, but hey....
I had planned that while sleeping, Sage could see a T-Rex like he wanted.....
Here are the other ones all done...
Now, onto the last part of drawing 'Sage' as well. I soon gave up on the idea of actually trying to render Sage to paint, and just used a cartoon image to do the job.
Here is what he looks like markered up...
And here is the finished room back to a 'messy' normal
(at least until about 4 years later when we repaint things again!)
Overall, worth the 3 days and about 20 hours needed to pull this off....
