Home mural ‘like a warm hug’ wins in paint competition

When we put a call-out for home-painted murals, a deluge of lovely images flooded our inbox.

Not happy to settle for a contrasting feature wall, these homeowners found inspiration and set about making beautiful wall art, mainly with testpots.

We haven’t been able to include all the entrants’ designs here, but check out the winners in our Resene-sponsored competition. Prizes were a $500 Resene voucher and $500 Prezzy card for the first place winner, and $500 Resene vouchers for the runners-up.

We asked for unrealised design ideas too, but didn’t have entrants in that category so we extended the prize pool for murals that had been completed.

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* How a Christchurch artist tackled her first mural

And the winner is …

Canterbury artist Kitiish Penketh​ wanted to cheer up a friend and so painted this mural wall in the friend’s Nelson home.

Examples of some of the messages included are: “Thank you for being a friend, I hope to see you again, I wrote to be with you, then we float in dreams and pretend.”

Resene marketing manager Karen Warman says she loved this one for its unique methodology, “And, I loved the reason it was done and the positivity of the idea – which I think everyone needs now.

“Imagine having that in your lounge from a friend – it would be like a warm hug every time you came home!”

Warman says she has seen over 1000 murals in Resene competitions, “but never one like this one”.

“I also thought it was an accessible idea that others could do without being a professional artist.”

Second place winner Kayla Christensen

Kāpiti Coast mother Kayla Christensen loves portrait painting and was inspired to create this mural on a privacy wall off an outside patio, after seeing a photoshoot of her favourite artist, Beyonce.

“My passion for portrait painting stemmed from my previous World of Wearable Art creations and I could just picture Beyonce with the foliage amongst the nikau palm in our garden and Kāpiti Island in the background.”

Christensen used Resene lumbersider White and Black for the base, and test pots in Resene Can Can, Cardinal, Cardin Green, Amazon, Peru Tan and Brown Pod.

She is delighted with the outcome of her mural wall. “I have always dreamed about all the creative murals I could paint in my home one day,” Christensen says, “and when my partner Jordy and I finally bought our first home in 2020 I couldn’t wait to paint giant portraits on our walls.”

The runners-up

Fiona Boutcher’s mountain mural was one of three runners-up. We received several mountain silhouette mural images – an accessible and popular design.

Palmerston North woman Boutcher says she painted this as a compromise with her son who wanted a mountain from Sonic. She wanted to go with something “relatively age-neutral”.

“The top mountain outline is based loosely on the outline of Mount Kinabalu in Sabah, Malaysia where I’m originally from. That mountain is my most favourite landmark, which can be seen all the way from the city (Kota Kinabalu) where I grew up.”

Boutcher used Resene Midwinter Grey for the “sky”, then in order from the top down: Gull Grey, Sorrento, Juniper, Mako, and Blue Charcoal.

Emma Baker wanted to create visual interest in the otherwise dull and lifeless space between the back of her house and the retaining wall.

“I took inspiration from a view I love,” she says, “the sun rising over the Orongorongo ranges.”

Colours used include Resene Galiano, Kamikaze, Wax flower, Japonica, Keppel, Bingo, Blue Lagoon, and Billabong.

She’s happy with the result. “The space is really inviting now, we have coffee here on the weekends. It’s such an improvement to the previous view from the kitchen: It brings in pops of colour, especially in winter.”

Petone pair Dani Henke and Becks Popham collaborated on this wall mural for a 6m concrete wall at the back of their garden. The wall is the exterior of a warehouse: “which casts half of the garden in shadow – not exactly a lovely vista to gaze upon,” Henke says.

With only the idea of “hands”, Popham sketched them first in chalk.

“We stepped back and assessed, deciding the hands needed to be holding something,” Henke says. “But what? How about bugs? Yes, with eyes for thoraxes. Yes, and those eyes can also be lightbulbs. YES!”

They used Resene Lipstick, Chetwode Blue, Seance and Pukeko for the darker hands, and the bright hand is Outrageous, Rapture, Rock N Roll, and Turbo. “The bugs use a variety of test pots including Bowie, Element, Tree Frog, Hot Chile, Daredevil, Fossil, Half Haystack and Copperfire,” Henke says.

They love how the mural has brightened their back garden. “The large purple hand and stag beetle are also visible from the street as you walk or drive by. I overheard a passerby say: ‘A local artist lives in this house.’