This Wednesday, I spent 7 hours standing in front of a wall, trying to harness the power of a paint roller and sputtering spray cans.
I’m used to drawing in Photoshop on my screen tablet at home. There I’ve already mastered line control, I understand the tools, I know all the shortcuts that I need. But all this knowledge doesn’t matter when you’re facing an uneven, textured wall. You don’t have an undo button, you don’t have line smoothing, and you have to stand up the whole time and control your whole body to make nice-looking lines. All of this made me feel like a complete beginner again.
The preparation stage
Before going out to paint, I’ve prepared extensively. First of all I had to figure out the logic of making a graffiti piece, here is an early attempt:
It was alright, but I wasn’t really happy with it. It felt a bit too basic.
So I made another attempt:
This one was much better and took much longer to make. I was really happy with it for around a day, but then as I looked at it more, I realized that I don’t really like it that much.
I tried one last time:
Finally, after 15 hours of exploring styles I made the piece that I was proud of. This was the one that I was going to paint on the actual wall.
A look back at 2019
This wasn’t my first time trying to transfer a digital sketch to a wall. Back in 2019 I did something similar, I made a quick throwie sketch in photoshop:
And then tried to transfer it to a wall:
I faced the same issues back then, my lines were wobbly and uneven, and I ran out of white paint too early.
This time I prepared much better though, and I was determined to see if I could finally get it right.
The unforgiving reality
Even after the 15 hours of preparation, the physical wall immediately humbled me.
The surface was so uneven that my roller couldn’t coat it evenly, leaving annoying little gaps in the grey background. When I finally started spraying, the cans had way more pressure than I anticipated, so the skinny banana cap that I was planning to use was sputtering paint everywhere. But it was going pretty well, here is the sketch that I did:
The part that was the most fun is filling in the colors, it was very forgiving and I enjoyed trying to make that gradient look smooth.
About five hours in, my friend had to leave. That was when I was left completely one-on-one with the piece, and I went fully into that flow state. I completely forgot about everything around me.
The most humbling part was definitely the linework. I just couldn’t hold the can straight enough, so I ended up using a piece of cardboard to manually clean up and straighten my wobbly lines.
Here’s the final piece:
Why being a beginner feels so good
At some point, mastery starts working against you. When you know every shortcut and every mistake takes one press of Ctrl+Z to fix, you stop being thrilled about making things. The creative process starts feeling a bit too predictable. You’re not bored exactly, but you’re safe.
Standing in front of that wall with no undo button and genuinely no idea if I could pull it off, I felt like a beginner again. I was pleasantly surprised every time I made a straight line, and disappointed when I couldn’t. But when I finally stepped back and looked at the finished piece, it felt incredibly powerful. It was that exact same high I felt years ago after finishing my first big illustration in Photoshop, the feeling that I am capable of anything if I just put in the effort.
This whole experience reminded me of the period back in 2021 when I had cool ideas but just couldn’t get my hands to make those ideas real. Going back to zero in a new medium reminded me of what it feels like to make art just to see if I can.
