You have always wanted to paint a mural… or you have painted a mural and it just seems flat. What is the answer? Are you looking for painting instructions for murals dimensional?

While it is impossible to teach mural painting on just this page… you can pick up a few tricks to get started.

Murals come in two different styles. One style is to paint on objects on a wall… and outline each one of them in cartoon style. This type of mural technique is the easiest to achieve and is usually reserved for baby murals and murals for kitchens.

clipped from www.create-a-mural.com

The other style of mural is a dimensional or realistic mural. A mural that looks so real… you are fooled for an instant or two into thinking that the illusion is actually real.

This type of mural requires you to learn about shading, shadows and highlights. It’s not an easy lesson to learn. Plus… you will need to learn the art of perspective. This was the hardest of all the lessons for me to learn. Trust me… my painting partner says ” You still don’t know everything about perspective”.

Perspective is the art of making something appear close or far away. Look at this painting and see how some of the objects appear to be up close and some appear to be very far away. You know this is a painting on a flat canvas and yet the objects appear dimensional.

Sunset Beach Diane Romanello

Watch these videos to see how easy it is to add highlights and shadows to create dimensional murals.