Spring has Sprung!

I have done it! I have completed a big(ish) project in just 3 days!

My baby can now stare off into nature while dosing off for his naps.

On the first day I drew out in pencil an outline
of the tree trunk, branches and the owl.
It's hard to see the tree outline because the photo got compressed,
but you can kind of see the owl.

On the second day I went to Home Depot,
asking if they had sample paints,
and the nice young man pointed to a lazy suzan full of little jars
of Behr primer/base paint waiting for color to be added to. 

I looked around and picked out
two shades of green (dark and light), brown, white and black.

I came home and started painting... that day I only painted the owl;
thought I'd acclimate myself :)

For the face and feathers I used
the left over paint that we used on our walls
and for the lighter shade of brown (the outline of the face and feathers)
I mixed some brown with a bit of white.

On the third day I painted the trunk and branches,
giving it two coats.
The first coat was the whole tree,
and the second was really just touching up
where the wall color was coming through.

For the leaves I cut out a leaf shape from a new sponge. 

I painted the sponged and then stamped it onto the branches,
painted, stamped, painted, stamped, and so on and so on.
But the sponge was leaving some spots inside the leaf unpainted.
Using a stippling paint method, I filled in each leaf.

For more shades of green I mixed the two greens and added some white. 

Then I mixed the darker green with some black.

I continued the "paint, stamp, stipple" process until I was satisfied
that there was indeed enough leaves.

A tree has sprung on our wall!