Queen ~b & Smoky Fox is an interior mural painted in Pittsboro, North Carolina. Built around two stylized characters, the mural tells a story about the beginning of a couple’s courtship — those early days when attraction, curiosity, sweetness, and symbolism all feel heightened.

Inspiration

The original inspiration for this mural came from characters I created during the online class Draw & Paint Your Imagination with Ten Hundred. The class emphasized character design, visual storytelling, and developing a personal creative universe, which opened the door for me to think about how invented characters could carry real emotional meaning.

For this mural, I used that character-driven approach to explore the beginning of a relationship. The two figures were inspired by drink names from a brunch date during the early stages of a couple’s courtship. Those names eventually became affectionate nicknames, and the mural grew into a visual interpretation of that tender, formative chapter.

Concept

Although the mural is rooted in one couple’s story, the intention is broader than biography. I wanted it to feel like the kind of mural that could hold any couple’s early story — the coded language, the private symbols, the meaningful details that might seem small from the outside but carry emotional weight for the people living them.

The wall itself made the concept feel especially fitting. Because it leads into a shared room, it became a natural place for a mural about connection, partnership, and the beginning of a love story. Rather than telling that story literally, I used animated characters, symbolic details, and visual motifs to create a scene that feels playful, intimate, and full of personal meaning.

Background

The background was designed to be visually interesting without competing with the characters in the foreground. At first, I considered using wildflowers, but once I began working with the wall and sketching out the composition, I realized the mural wanted something more organic and atmospheric. The result became a monochromatic field of flowing shapes in blue — imaginative, storybook-like, and soft enough to let the characters remain the emotional focus.

Certain elements within that background help carry the story. The sun, clouds, rain, and organic forms all function as emotional cues rather than literal scenery. They suggest light entering darkness, tenderness entering uncertainty, and the idea that love can shift the emotional weather of a person’s life.

Characters

Both characters began as sketches created for the Ten Hundred class and later evolved through digital drawing, refinement, and eventually mural form. In that sense, the mural is not only about a relationship — it is also about artistic growth, showing how a character can move from sketch, to digital concept, to sticker, to painted wall.

Queen ~b carries a whimsical, magical presence, while Smoky Fox balances that with warmth and heart. Together they suggest the chemistry of opposites, the sweetness of nicknames, and the feeling of two inner worlds beginning to recognize one another.

Easter Eggs

A big part of this mural’s heart lives in its “easter eggs” — the small symbolic details woven into the characters and setting. These details were inspired by real moments, gifts, personality traits, and first impressions, but they also point to a bigger idea: that the most meaningful murals can hold layers of private symbolism inside a visually accessible scene.

That is part of what makes this mural feel transferable. It is not only about one pair of people. It is also an example of how I can translate a couple’s memories, symbols, and emotional language into painted form — creating a mural that feels personal to them while still visually inviting to others.

Process

The mural began with graphite sketches, then moved into digital concept development on my iPad using Adobe Fresco. I photographed the wall, built the design digitally over the image to work out placement and scale, and then used that concept as my guide on site. The wall was first painted with blue interior latex, then the background was chalked out and painted using tints and shades of Phthalo Blue. After that, the characters were layered into the scene using Golden Fluid Acrylics.

This process let me blend illustration, design, and mural painting into one workflow — something that has become an important part of how I build visual stories on walls.

Final Thought

Queen ~b & Smoky Fox is a mural about the emotional language of early love — the symbols, sparks, weather shifts, private meanings, and imaginative ways two people begin to shape a world together. While this version represents one couple’s story, the deeper intention is to show how a mural can hold your story too.

Title: Queen ~b and Smoky Fox
Size: (7.6’ * 2.08’) 15.808’ + (7.6’ * 3.48’) 26.448’ + (1 * 3.43’) 3.43’ = 45.686 sf
Site/City: Private Residence, Pittsboro, NC 
Medium: Acrylic paint on a interior latex painted wall.
Date: September 2020.