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04 · May 2026
Layered Airbrush Mural
A realistic mural painted with only an airbrush: the image is split into five tonal layers, each laser-cut as a cardboard stencil, and the stencils line up to build the finished grayscale picture on the wall.
- Tools
- Image processing to SVG layers, laser cutting, airbrush
- Result
- Five 3 × 3 ft stencils, airbrushed in under 5 hours; still up in our building
Overview
A friend and I painted this mural in our building, and it’s still up on the wall. The image is the design from our floor’s shirts.
The design constraints: get a detailed, realistic grayscale image onto the wall with only an airbrush, using materials we already had on hand, at a massive size. Each stencil had to be 3 ft by 3 ft, and we needed a lot of them. Instead of painting freehand, we treated the wall like a print: I filtered the image into five tonal layers, turned each layer into an SVG, and laser-cut the stencils from cardboard we had around. Each stencil carries one tone, so airbrushing through them one after another builds up the shading, and the whole mural took under five hours.
The 3D model shows the five stencils pulled apart, so you can see what each layer cuts out.
