Liberty's Room

A few pics of The Cherry Blossom Tree I did in Liberty's Room. Took about 8 hours. I'm showing the original sketch and some of the process photos.

The first thing with something like this (room painting) is to do a smaller drawing of the overall idea, which should be worked up as much as possible so that you get a familiar Idea with how everything will interact and look overall (composition).

 With The composition figured out, I use a black crayon and sketch out the design directly on the wall. Crayon cleans up pretty easy, just be sure to use it lightly. You shouldn't be able to see the drawing from any kind of distance. It should stay simple, no real detail, just work out things where they should go. I used quick circles to mark out the flowers.
After the sketch is adjusted, start painting in your base colors. Just a flat color, starting with your darks and largest colors.

I left the branches broken or avoided painting the trunk where I knew the lighter blossoms would go. This way the lighter paint doesn't have to compete with the darker paint. Having darker paint under the lighter paint will affect the lighter colors and make less bright, or at worst, muddy looking. When the Darks are painted in (still not much worried about the details) I then went in with a base pink for the flowers, following up with lighter pinks for highlights and darker pinks/light maroons for shadows.

 I used the window in the room to pick the light source, so all my highlights were on the sides of the flowers closer to the window, the shadows went away from the window. This made it really easy lighting scheme to follow. thinking of lighting when you add more colors and detail will add lots of depth and interest to your painting. After the lighting effects, I added more details, and variations to the flowers. Stuff that looks nice up close, but you wouldn't notice from any distance. These kinds of details are always last, but make a big difference in the end.

And thats it. I used pretty simple, cheap materials; 2oz acrylics that cost $2 each, cheap craft brushes and a 1" paint brush. No clearcoat, I like how the flat colors of the tree contrast with the semi-gloss lilac.