Theme Room - Lion King

I spent majority of the weekend at home with a few friends in a cloud of smoke. I could not catch all the football matches because they are not being shown on cable television. So today I got to get someone to hook up a local antenna for me. Ghana’s first match is on tonight but I believe kick off is only at 2am, but I should be at MU Bar with my jersey on and flag in hand. I do not expect them to go too far but it is great to support a home team.

So I got on with the Lion King theme for the kids room. I laid down the first coat of Golden Dream and realized I would need another gallon so I made it back to Ace hardware before they closed and managed to put on another coat on Friday night itself before the artists were due to come in on Saturday. I expected the color to be a little lighter but when it dried on the wall it was a lot brighter and actually lit the room up a bit. I was not sure it would work.

Stanley showed up with 3 other blokes from the art school. They were pretty mellow fellows and they agreed to paint the room for about $80. I had lunch cooked at home and we drank quite a few beers too. This also included the supplies they bought which cost about $30. They used some acrylic paints I think and they only bought a few colors because they mixed them to obtain the required hues. It was pretty cool actually.

I picked up some Lion King coloring books and I selected pictures from there to throw up on the walls. I must admit that I did not think they could make an exact copy of what was in the book. Usually the dimensions and scale get really fucked when you are free handing like that. Also it seemed to be quite a task making the right colors. This is how Pumba started.

It did not look like much but he ended up real nice. That’s pretty fucking awesome if you ask me. Stanley did most of the freehand sketching on the walls and they all rotated painting so the work went along pretty quick.

The first image that was sketched on the wall was this hyena. I forget her name but that is the one Whoopi Goldberg narrated. It looked kind of scary but by the time I came to the room it was already sketched on the wall so I decided to let it go. This secession of pictures is pretty cool.

We through in these paw prints to accent the room. That was actually Stanley’s idea and it came out pretty cool. It was just a random image on the cover back ground that he modified. The terracotta color really went well with the base coat I think.

Of course we had to put in a picture of young Simba. I was worried that this color would blend in too much with the base coat but as you can see it also turned out pretty damn good.

I did not want to overcrowd the space with too many images so I did leave some large bare areas but that works perfect. It would have been way to busy otherwise. We added an image of the bird, some more paw prints, a butterfly from another book (because the kids like butterflies), and of course a picture of The Lion King. Here a set of before and after pictures. I think this is way better than what the room was before. I hope the kids like it.

This color scheme also goes a lot better with the fitted closet and desk. Overall it was a day well spent. The whole endeavor only cast around $150. In the US or Europe I would never be able to achieve this for that little. We had a great time painting and listening to music. I also made a friend out of this. I should be going to check out the art gallery at the school soon. Also I am hoping to get Stanley some more work on the side with other projects. He has good taste in art and music as well so I am eager to see more of his personal work. So overall it was a productive weekend. I can pat my self on the back for that.