Let the true mural magic begin! You’re ready to seek out your first mural clients.

But first, I want to highlight an important point that I mentioned in some of the other articles: you should document everything you do related to murals, especially your “practice” murals. All of that practice is not only building your skills in large-scale painting but also giving you content to share on social media.

Social media content that documents your mural work creates credibility for you as a mural artist. It gives your audience a reason to trust that you know how to do the work. The more “behind the scenes” evidence you show of painting murals, the more confident potential clients will be that you are the real deal.

Here’s the unfortunate truth about finding your first mural wall: most likely, no one is going to let you paint on their wall without any examples of mural work (not even for free). This feels like a no-win situation for a lot of artists: I need a wall to get experience but I need experience to get access to walls!

Guess what? The mural wall is a myth.

In the first post of this series, I talked about mural myths. One of the most common myths about painting murals is that they need to go on a large exterior wall. The truth is that almost any large surface can be a mural surface, and an indoor mural is just as “mural-y” as an outdoor mural! 

I get A LOT of questions about transferring artwork to a mural-sized surface. This is (understandably) one of the most intimidating parts of beginning mural work for a lot of artists. Lucky for you, there’s a ton of options out there, and many of them are super-accessible to beginner muralists.

What I mean is you don’t need to drop hundreds of dollars on a projector for your first project. There are other time-tested ways to get your work on large surfaces that don’t include any expensive equipment!

I did my early murals completely freehand and these days I usually use transfer paper or a projector. Both techniques have their advantages, so first I’ll explain when and how I use each method.

Aww yeah, we’re back for Part 2 of my five-part mural painting blog series. Part 1 hopefully helped to smash some of the myths & limiting beliefs surrounding mural work, and in this post, we’re diving into mural painting supplies!

You basically need two things to do work as a muralist (other than artwork): 1. supplies and 2. willingness to try. Okay, a little experience doesn’t hurt either.

The secret, though, is that neither of those two things needs to be fancy or technically “correct” for you to do murals! They don’t even need to be mural-specific.

There’s no way around it: murals are cool. (That’s not a myth haha; I’ll get to those in a minute.) It’s awe-inspiring to stand near a gigantic piece of art, and dare I say even more magical to step back and admire one you just painted.

As someone who’s painted 15 murals over the years, I’ve received lots of questions about how to get started, which is understandable because I had tons of burning questions at the beginning too! I honestly didn’t realize how accessible the entry into mural work was until I actually took the leap and gave it a shot.

In this five-part series (awwww yeah!) I’m going to walk you through some of the most important things I’ve learned about mural work, starting with some common myths that hold creatives back from getting started. The other articles in this series will tackle things like technique, supplies, and finding walls and clients, and I’ll be rolling them out over the next week. By the end of this series, my hope is that you’ll have the knowledge and confidence to try painting a mural of your own in 2020.