Brightest Young Things

I think I'm still worn out from the dizzying highs, terrifying lows, and creamy middles of the election. I'm sure we all are, especially given how a good 75% of this town was working day and night to either make this happen or to stop it.

So I'm going to do a quick wrap up on painting, but also discuss how to (relatively) easily paint awesome artwork on a wall. This is for people who (like myself) are not particularly artistic. By the end of this, you'll learn how to paint the Obama logo on your wall, or if you like a picture of a barracuda.

First off, a few pieces of advice I forgot to mention or were brought up in the comments.

• Be sure to prepare your wall! This means washing it. A good cleaner to use is TSP (Tri Sodium Phosphate). TSP will also degloss a shiny surface (which is necessary to paint over a Satin or Semi Gloss wall).
• Look for "oops" paint at the store. These are cans of paint that have been "mistinted." Sometimes they are horribly ugly colors, but often it's just a few shades off of something that might be acceptable. Make sure you get the proper finish, though. Often these come with discounts of 50% or more.
• Mix your paint together if using more than one can. If you are using two or more gallons to paint a room, mix all of the cans together in a 5-gallon bucket first. If the color varies at all between the cans, this will ensure you get a uniform color.

Secondly, I want to talk for just a second about clean up. For interior latex paint (you should not really be using anything other than latex indoors), you can clean up with soap and water. If you splatter some paint, or spill it on the floor, clean it up immediately. You can wipe it up with a wet rag if you get to it quickly enough. I suggest buying a bottle of Goo Gone's Painter's Pal, which retails for about $7-8 a bottle. This will make your life much easier. Also consider getting a bag of wiping clothes (much better than paper towels, and about $1.99 for a bag). Plastic dropcloths are cheap and will do a world of good. Even if you think you won't get paint all over the place, remember you will get spatter from a paint roller. No matter how hard you try, you will. I promise.

And be sure to soak your brushes. I can't emphasize this enough. Buy a good brush and clean it. You'll get better results and save money over time.

Now the fun part.

So now you've gotten pumped up. He won, and you love Shepard Fairey. But, you don't just want a poster. Anyone can have a poster. Go big or go home, right? You want this shit 8 feet tall on your wall. You can do it (yes, you can!). It's not terribly difficult, either. Well, the Hope poster is a bit harder. We might want to take it down a notch and try it with just the Hope logo. Unless you are feeling very adventurous!

Anyhow, what do you need? Well, you need some paint. For the Obama logo, you'd want to get red and light blue. Then you need some plastic transparencies that are compatible with your printer. I know what you're thinking. Yes, I'm about to tell you that you need to find one of these:

Perhaps the library rents them. I'm not sure. They sell for like $40 on eBay. If you work in an office, you probably have one. Hell, you can skip the hard part of this project if you have access to a digital projector. If you have access to a digital projector let me already ask you why you're not playing video games or something on your wall with it.

But yeah, so you'll want to find a good image, and tweak it. By tweak it, I mean make it a bit less complicated. If you have photoshop, you can choose Indexed color mode, where you reduce the image to just a few colors. Here's an example I made. It's a different plumber.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

Now print this image onto your transparency sheet. Make sure the ink dries and all of that, and then set up your projector. You can project this image on to your wall, and it then is basically a big paint by numbers.

Think of the possibilities. You can be the coolest cat on the block when you paint a huge version of the album art of "If You're Feeling Sinister" on the wall of your bedroom.

That's it kids. Is it January 20, yet?