Introduction: Making Your Own M.C. Escher Style Wall-painting
I'm going to show you how to make a large M.C. Escher style wall painting for your living room for very low costs.
I've decided for a part of M.C. Escher's "Metamorphose III" the part where squares become lizzards and then transform to hexagons.
I also took different colors (red and orange) for the painting, because I find they make the living room more comfortable. Furthermore I left out the details of the lizzards (eyes, claws...) because the image would become too disturbed for a wall painting.
I've decided for a part of M.C. Escher's "Metamorphose III" the part where squares become lizzards and then transform to hexagons.
I also took different colors (red and orange) for the painting, because I find they make the living room more comfortable. Furthermore I left out the details of the lizzards (eyes, claws...) because the image would become too disturbed for a wall painting.
Step 1: Tools and Parts
You will only need a few tools for creating your own regular tiled wall-painting:
10 sheets of paper (I took DIN A4 paper, similar to the US letter format)
1 Pencil
1 eraser
2 Tones of Color for Wall-Painting (I had red and yellow to produce the colors red and orange)
1 larger brush for the areas and
1 smaller brush for the details
a digital Image that you want to reproduce.
If you want to make your live easier it is useful to have a printer. But since I've just moved in to my new apartment I didn't have one.
And if you own a beamer you can make your live much more easier.
10 sheets of paper (I took DIN A4 paper, similar to the US letter format)
1 Pencil
1 eraser
2 Tones of Color for Wall-Painting (I had red and yellow to produce the colors red and orange)
1 larger brush for the areas and
1 smaller brush for the details
a digital Image that you want to reproduce.
If you want to make your live easier it is useful to have a printer. But since I've just moved in to my new apartment I didn't have one.
And if you own a beamer you can make your live much more easier.
Step 2: Prepare the Pattern
The first part is to create the pattern
If you own a beamer you can skip this step entirely
As I don't own a printer right now, I had to create the patterns manually (If you have printer just upscale your digital image to the correct size and print it on several pages).
If you want to do it old school, upscale the image to the correct sizze (I took about 12cm for the squares in the beginning) put your sheet of paper on your TFT-monitor and sketch the outline of one of the figures.
As you can see in the image below, i only had a very low res version of the image, so you need a bit of phantasy to make the patterns, but it's not sooo important to have them super-exact.
I only cut out the colored elements, as i leave the white ones white.
Furthermore, to make my live easier, I numbered the different (colored) elements from left to right starting with one (resulting in 19 elements in total).
As you can see in the image they don't fit together perfectly, but that's not bad, you just have to improvise a little bit when transferring them to your wall
If you own a beamer you can skip this step entirely
As I don't own a printer right now, I had to create the patterns manually (If you have printer just upscale your digital image to the correct size and print it on several pages).
If you want to do it old school, upscale the image to the correct sizze (I took about 12cm for the squares in the beginning) put your sheet of paper on your TFT-monitor and sketch the outline of one of the figures.
As you can see in the image below, i only had a very low res version of the image, so you need a bit of phantasy to make the patterns, but it's not sooo important to have them super-exact.
I only cut out the colored elements, as i leave the white ones white.
Furthermore, to make my live easier, I numbered the different (colored) elements from left to right starting with one (resulting in 19 elements in total).
As you can see in the image they don't fit together perfectly, but that's not bad, you just have to improvise a little bit when transferring them to your wall
Step 3: Transfer the Patterns to the Wall
In this step I will show you how to transfer the patterns to the wall:
If you own a beamer you can simply project the original painting onto your wall and sketch the contours.
However, if you don't own a beamer take your patterns and do it the hard way;-)
The most important thing is to not get the whole thing skew. Therefore i took a level to put on a straight line of tape on the wall for the upper and lower border of the image. Then i put on a strrip of tape for the left border of the image.
The first Pattern (the squares) are the most important ones. If you get them skew only a little bit your whole image will be skew remarkably. Therefore I started with the squares, because they are easy to get straight.
If you've got the first column of Patterns done, start with the second one (they should fit nicely to the corners of the first row) and so on. Until you've got the outlines of the complete image on your wall.
In the Images you will see, that I've started Painting them midway, I did this to see, if it even looks good. But i propose to draw the outlines completely first.
If you own a beamer you can simply project the original painting onto your wall and sketch the contours.
However, if you don't own a beamer take your patterns and do it the hard way;-)
The most important thing is to not get the whole thing skew. Therefore i took a level to put on a straight line of tape on the wall for the upper and lower border of the image. Then i put on a strrip of tape for the left border of the image.
The first Pattern (the squares) are the most important ones. If you get them skew only a little bit your whole image will be skew remarkably. Therefore I started with the squares, because they are easy to get straight.
If you've got the first column of Patterns done, start with the second one (they should fit nicely to the corners of the first row) and so on. Until you've got the outlines of the complete image on your wall.
In the Images you will see, that I've started Painting them midway, I did this to see, if it even looks good. But i propose to draw the outlines completely first.
Step 4: Paint It
This is the easiest but the moost time consuming step:
Paint it!
At first I painted the Areas very roughly with two coatings (so that the white of the wall doesn't shine through) of color with the big brush, then I painted the details (edges and corners).
I took me and my girlfriend almost one day to paint it.
You can of course use more shades of color like in the original image, but I liked it better with fewer colors.
Paint it!
At first I painted the Areas very roughly with two coatings (so that the white of the wall doesn't shine through) of color with the big brush, then I painted the details (edges and corners).
I took me and my girlfriend almost one day to paint it.
You can of course use more shades of color like in the original image, but I liked it better with fewer colors.