I recently completed a community mural with 10+ volunteers at SOMArts Gallery for an exhibition, Grow Our Souls. It was my first time executing a mural, as the one I completed for Facebook was a digital sketch that was printed out as wallpaper and adhered to the wall. Here are some tips for turning your digital art into a mural (that can be painted):

Conceptualize your design
Sketch your design (and test it)
Purchase your supplies
Prep your space

Conceptualize Your Design

When I was researching concepts for the Grow Our Souls exhibition that I curated in April 2022, I kept seeing koi ponds and lotuses as the primary motif for “Asian-inspired” art. I thought about the underwater ecosystem that supports the lotus and settled on creating a mural that highlighted the lotus stem, which serves as protective cover for underwater species.

Sketch Your Design (in Procreate or Adobe)

Using an image I had taken of an aquarium, I sketched out the design in Procreate. I edited the colors to match my color palette. I created separate files for each layer so that we could project them, layer-by-layer, as volunteers worked from bottom to top layers: stem to pad to bubbles.

I also used a pixel-to-inch converter to ensure the size of the image is an adequate size and resolution for projecting on the walls. The mural ended up falling within a 9’ x 12’ space due to height restrictions. As I didn’t have much time, I tested the image on the day we were supposed to begin painting.

We used a Panasonic PT projector with at least 5000-7000 Lumens. The image was super bright and while we couldn’t get the colors exactly correct, it was sharp enough for us to “paint on” with the lighter colors. However, when we got to the darker colors, we used the image to help us sketch rough lines for the image and colored within them.

Purchase Your Supplies

I used the most affordable interior wall paint from the hardware store. I eyeballed the colors that matched the color palette in-store. In hindsight, I would’ve purchased the glossiest white paint possible as it would have enabled the bubbles that were part of the design to pop against indoor gallery walls. Otherwise, semi-gloss paint should work just fine.

My supply list consisted of (for a 10- to 15- person mural rotating in 2-4 person shifts):

4 paint buckets with handles
2 quart buckets (for clean and dirty brushes)
4 small and medium brushes for detail work
4 foam brushes or small rollers for big layers
Gloves and paint pans for mixing

Prep Your Space

The staff at SOMArts gallery cleaned and prepped the space prior to painting. We laid down tarp and set up two ladders.

We also set up the cleaning stations as it got messy super fast. Any leftover paint was covered up with tarp in their pans.

While most of the volunteers were artists themselves, be prepared to instruct some on how to paint and/or use brushes.

Resources

Check out Mimi Chao’s tutorial, which provides a much more intensive breakdown of the mural painting process.

And that’s it! Enjoy the process and share with me any additional tips you learned about painting your own mural.