Becoming a Mural Artist - A Learning Curve

Back in January of this year when I decided to pursue painting murals as a career I don’t think I understood just how much I would have to learn and how many side quests I would have and still have to complete in order to make my mural painting a viable career.

Regardless of what career you choose continued professional development can be both expected and encouraged. For me I believe that to be mural painting technique, artistic & design skills but that is not what I am referring to, I am talking about the learning and side quests you have to take as a freelancer, outside what your profession is. Portfolio building , branding and content creation being just some of the things on the list of learning curves for me.

You cannot have a creative career without having a portfolio to show to potential clients. If I wanted to become a mural artist I needed to paint on some walls and take some photos. Luckily for me I have a mum who is supportive and open minded about having murals in the home and once I had a couple in the bag, word of mouth helped me build the rest of my portfolio. Although my portfolio still needs some refinement it is growing to be something I’m proud of.

The next thing I did was more of an abstract learning curve. I bought an iPad - large spends sometimes make me feel a bit sick & although a second hand £500 iPad might not be a big spend for some. I think my working class upbringing has made any purchase I make that’s over £100 give me a slither of anxiety. What the learning curve is in this case is, is that usually you have to invest a bit of money to progress.

My iPad changed how I worked & aided me in my other learning curves. I could start designing murals digitally, create mock-ups, create this website, take a digital marketing course and design marketing materials. It was a worthy investment & I learnt I’m going to have to make worthy investments throughout my career so I might as well start now.

Social media marketing in this day and age can be considered a necessity for most freelance creatives & I am no exception. Having only ever used social media for personal use, I took a free online digital marketing course to expand my knowledge on the subject. Having the knowledge is one thing but putting it into practice is a different ball game. Remembering to take photos & videos of my mural process, thinking up content ideas for when I’ve not got a mural on the go, ensuring the quality is good enough to be posted whilst posting regularly/consistently can be a hard habit to build. It was going well for a little while but I did get into a bit of a rut with it, I think this learning curve might be an ongoing one with some trial and error.

Word of mouth marketing is great but we are very much in a digital era. So when the owner of a nursery I’d painted a mural for asked me for my website to pass on to someone, I felt slightly underprepared for the professional muralist life… because I didn’t have a website. As a 23 year old fresh(ish) out of university paying someone thousands or even just hundreds of pounds to make me a website is not an option. I headed to google and YouTube to figure out the easiest and most cost effective way for me to make a website for myself.

Not that I am making excuses but my first ‘social media rut’ did coincidently occur at a similar time as to when I decided to start making my website, this website. Though I’m grateful that the technological advances of today mean I can drag & drop to make a website rather than having to code, it’s still a huge learning curve. I have never delved into the realms of website builders, domains and hosts so I did feel a little out of my depth at first.

These are my two favourite perks of this digital era…

1. if you don’t know how to code making a website is still accessible

2. if you have the time and patience you can learn just about anything from the internet.

You can judge for yourself whether or not you think the website turned out okay but I’d say I did pretty well for a complete novice. In fact I’d say I’m doing pretty well with learning all these new skills. All the extra tasks, admin and side quests you need to do as an artist to make it a viable career can be daunting but you shouldn’t let it put you off trying, I have found that learning more and doing more has not only motivated me to continue my craft but helped me grow as an individual. Growth in mind, soul and skill set is never a bad thing.