Nothing But 8-Bit Blue Sky From Now On

I'd recently finished a little work on the garage, which included installing some weatherproof speakers on the wall facing the patio. I stood outside to enjoy the stereo, but one thing was distracting me from my water-resistant aural bliss. The exterior of the garage looked terrible. Undefinably blue-grey paint was flaking off the siding. The white trim was all scaly and less white than I would like. I spent the rest of the fall '14 and early spring '15 painting it with Summer Sky blue paint from Metro Paint. It cost maybe $35 for 5 gallons and it looked pretty good when it was finished.  
My friend Nick from Ineptech came over to check out the result and suggested doing a mural on the wall. 

Step the First I masked off the wall. I used stencils for almost all of the detail painting, but a couple times I could do the base color for a large section all at once.

Step Two
I drew out enlarged patterns, most of which conveniently followed a grid of 16 by 16 squares. I couldn't find my scalpel so I used a hobby knife to cut them out. I did a few test runs onto cardboard to get my taping and spray paint technique right. Here are some mock-ups on paper, the cutting process, a couple finished stencils on paper, and couple on some extra wood siding I had for test shots.



Step Three
To fit the v-rustic siding, I had to fold the top and bottom of the patterns and attach tiny rolls of tape to the back before hitting it with the spray paint. These patterns were repeated anywhere from two to 80+ times. Some of the stencils were caked stiff with paint after the so many uses. A few of the stencils were one time use, like the warp-pipe and the flag, which felt like more effort. Secret Note: The clouds and bushes are the same shapes, just different colors and the bushes cut off two-thirds of the way down when they meet the stones of the pathway.

Step Four
I went back over some of the wall with a brush and some leftover blue paint to fix overspray and drip runs. This cleaned up a lot of edges. I also used the brush for some cloud accents. This got pretty sloppy until I figured out that dabbing was better than brushing the paint into the stencils. 

Step the Final

I painted the downspout to resemble the flagpole. 
I really liked the way this turned out. Thanks for the idea Nick!

The Master Plan

All the mock-ups

It took a few stencils to complete

Side Note
Before putting up the question blocks, I thought it would be cool to make a few shirts with them. I tried a couple different makes of shirts, and a few color schemes. My daughter helped me make a small one. All of the paint for these was hand-brushed. Most of the fabric paint came from my neighbor Dee from Magpie Messenger who does a lot of screen printing. Many of the colors were inherited or found in free piles so their age is unknown. As a result, many of them washed out despite heavy heat-fixing. I got to remake a couple of the shirts more than once. 

The response from the neighbors has been entirely positive. My favorite is when I'm in the house with the windows open and someone is walking by whistling the Super Mario Bros theme.