Large Area Repair:
Although outside the scope of this tutorial, I thought I'd mention how a larger area is repaired. If you're repairing a large area or entire wall, then you'll probably have to use a hopper spray gun and air compressor.
You can typically rent this equipment from a rental store. You put a thinned mixture of drywall joint compound (e.g., 30 pounds of compound to 5 pints of water) with consistency like runny batter into the hopper, run the gun half open through a small nozzle at about 25-30 psi and you should be close to the right size "splats" for an orange peel wall texture.
Any number of textures can be applied by varying these four things:
