You’ve done everything possible to make your Man Cave the envy of your buddies, yet you still long for something more. Something that will give your dedicated sports room an extra touch of awesomeness that nobody else has thought of. Perhaps all you need now is an enlarged, hand painted logo of your favorite sports team adorning the wall. You might have heard of other Man Cave owners having to use expensive hi-tech projectors and other equipment to accomplish this, but there is another ages old method of enlarging images that the masters used centuries ago. Even better, the method I’m going to cover in this article doesn’t require any special equipment other than a tape measure and a level.
What you’ll need
The first thing you’ll need to kick-start this project is a copy of the logo you want to enlarge and reproduce. Luckily, finding a good copy of your team’s logo is as easy as searching for your “team’s name” + logo in your favorite search engine’s image search feature. One huge pitfall of getting images from the web is that most web graphics are pixelated and grainy. Try to find an image that is relatively large (measuring about 700 to 800 pixels in either width or height) so it will print out clearly. Additionally, you want to make sure that the image you use does not have a busy background. Gradients, patterns and other distracting background elements might make it more difficult when it comes time to reproduce it on the wall. Thankfully, the internet is full of places where you can find hi-res versions of your team’s logo.
As for your painting supplies, consider using paintbrushes of different sizes; larger ones for covering larger areas of color and smaller ones for details and black outlines. Be sure to pick up some paint that matches the colors in the logo, too.
Lastly, you’ll want to have a measuring tape, a level and a yard stick for constructing a grid on the wall.
Using the Grid Method
The Grid Method has been used by artists for centuries for the purpose of enlarging and transferring images onto other drawing surfaces. Don’t worry if you’re not artistically inclined, though; this method is really simple.
1. First, you’ll need to print your logo out onto a regular sheet of paper. Make sure that there is a little white space all around the edges of the image on your printout.
2. Now, using a ruler in the white space surrounding the image, you want to draw a box around the logo. To make the next steps as easy as possible, you should round the height and width of the box to the nearest inch.
3. Next, create a grid filled with one inch by one inch squares within the box.
4. Now, using your pencil, level, yardstick and measuring tape, draw a larger corresponding grid on the wall where you want the logo to go. Try out different scales on paper before you commit to one. Calculate what the dimensions of your logo would be if you made your grid out of 6 by 6 inch boxes (or 8 by 8 inch boxes) in stead and see if that fits into your allotted space on the wall.
5. Once you have your grid on the wall, grab your pencil and start transferring the logo, box by box, from your small grid to the larger grid. If you’re finding it difficult to get the lines and curves just right in a particular area, simply draw extra lines onto your small grid and on the wall grid to give you more reference points.
6. All that’s left now is to paint over your pencil lines and to fill in the colors of your logo. Be sure to step back and compare your work to the logo on your small grid to make sure things are still lining up and looking great.
Hand painting a huge team logo on your wall like this is an extremely fun and rewarding project to undertake and will make your Man Cave even more personalized than before. The greatest thing about doing this kind of project yourself is that not only will your result will be truly unique, but your pals will be scratching their heads trying to figure out how you did it.