How I Create Large-Scale Murals Using Procreate and Adobe Illustrator — A Toronto Mural Artist’s Process

When most people think of murals, they picture an artist standing in front of a wall with a paintbrush and a sketch taped to a ladder. My process looks a little different. I work on an iPad, divide massive walls into digital sections, and send files to a vector artist before anything ever gets printed. It’s a fully modern workflow — and in this post, I’m going to walk you through every step of it. Whether you’re an artist looking to break into mural design, a business owner curious about how custom murals are made, or just someone who geeks out over creative process — this one’s for you.

Step 1: I Always Visit the Location First Before I open Procreate, before I sketch a single thing, I visit the space. This might sound obvious, but you’d be surprised how many artists skip this step and just work from a photo. A photo doesn’t tell you how the light hits the wall at noon. It doesn’t tell you what businesses are around it, what the foot traffic looks like, or what kind of energy the space has. When I visited the Sunset Grill location on Richmond Street in Toronto’s Financial District, I spent time looking at the surrounding buildings, the interior of the restaurant, and how the whole space felt from the street. Downtown Toronto has a very specific energy — busy, urban, layered. I wanted the mural to feel like it belonged there, not like it was dropped in from somewhere else. I call this absorbing the vibe. It’s the foundation everything else is built on. Step 2: Brand Research and Building Your Element List Once I have the location feel locked in, I do brand research. I ask myself: What does this place stand for? What do they sell? What feeling do they want people to have? Then I build what I call an element list — a collection of words and visuals that are directly tied to the brand. For Sunset Grill, that list looked something like:

• Breakfast, brunch, lunch

• Eggs, bacon, coffee

• Warm, welcoming, classic

For a different client — say, a chicken tender spot — it might be:

• Juicy, crispy, saucy, sizzling

• Bold, fun, energetic

These words become the visual ingredients of the mural. Every character, every object, every detail I draw has to connect back to this list. Nothing random. Nothing just because it looks cool. Everything earns its place. Step 3: Thumbnail Concepts in Procreate With my element list ready, I open Procreate and start sketching 2 to 3 rough thumbnail concepts. These are loose — just enough to communicate a composition and an idea. I present all of them to the client and let them choose a direction. Sometimes they pick one straight up, sometimes they want to mix elements from two different thumbnails. Either way, this step keeps everyone aligned before I invest serious time in the full illustration. Step 4: Inking and Building the Illustration Once the concept is approved, I move fast. I start with basic shapes — blocking in the composition, getting proportions right, figuring out where everything lives on the canvas. Then comes inking. For my style, clean defined lines around every element are nonnegotiable. The ink gives the illustration its character and energy. I work with bold, confident lines — no scratchy or uncertain strokes. The linework has to read clearly even at a distance, because remember, this is eventually going on a wall. After inking, I move to color exploration. I’ll do multiple color thumbnails — small versions of the full illustration with different color palettes — before committing to anything. Step 5: Color Harmony — The Most Underrated Part Here’s something I think about a lot that most people overlook: color harmony. For the Sunset Grill mural, I chose red and orange as the primary color family. Warm, energetic, food-forward. But here’s the key — that choice didn’t just apply to the main characters. It applied to everything in the scene. Background buildings, vehicles, small objects — all of it was tinted to stay within that warm palette. This is what makes a mural feel cohesive and intentional rather than chaotic. When every element shares a color relationship, the whole piece reads as one unified image even when it’s packed with detail. My approach: pick a primary color, then build your shadows and highlights around it. I usually work with flat colors first, then add a shadow pass and a highlight pass. The result is rich and dimensional without being overworked. Step 6: The Canvas Size Problem (and How I Solve It) Here’s where things get technical — and this is the part most tutorials don’t talk about.

Murals are big. Like, really big. A typical wall might be 10 feet tall and 100 feet wide. When you convert that to inches and multiply by 300 DPI for print quality, you’re looking at a file size that Procreate simply cannot handle. The app will cap out, your layers will be crushed down to almost nothing, and you’ll be working with maybe 4-5 layers total. Here’s my workaround: I divide the mural into sections. For a 10ft x 100ft wall:

• Convert to inches: 120" x 1200"

• Divide the width in half: two canvases at 120" x 600" each

Each section is now manageable at 300 DPI with enough layers to work properly I complete the illustration in sections, making sure the edges line up perfectly so they connect seamlessly when assembled for print.

This one technique alone will save you enormous frustration if you’re serious about digital mural design. Step 7: Vectorizing the Lineart in Adobe Illustrator Once the Procreate illustration is complete, I export each section and send it to my vector artist, who traces all the linework in Adobe Illustrator.

Why? Because Procreate produces raster artwork — it’s made of pixels. When you scale raster art up to mural size, those pixels show. Lines get soft, edges get blurry, and the print quality suffers.

Vector lines are mathematical — they scale to any size with zero quality loss. Whether it’s printed at 5 feet or 50 feet, the lines stay razor sharp.

The vectorized file comes back clean, crisp, and fully print-ready. This is the step that takes a great digital illustration and turns it into a great mural.

The Biggest Mistakes I See Digital Mural Artists Make

1. Too many references, not enough personal style. References are useful but they can become a trap. When you pull from 10 different artists, you end up with a mural that looks like nobody — a mix of styles that doesn’t have a clear identity. Stay true to one visual language throughout the whole piece. If you’re going animated and illustrative, commit to that everywhere. If you’re going realistic, follow it all the way through.
   

2. Skipping the pre-planning. I cannot stress this enough. The visit, the brand research, the element list, the thumbnails — this is not extra work. This is the work. Artists who skip straight to drawing often end up redoing everything halfway through because the concept wasn’t solid to begin with.

Final Thoughts The digital-to-print mural workflow is still relatively new, and honestly, not enough artists are talking about it. Procreate gives you incredible flexibility and speed. Adobe Illustrator gives you the line quality and scalability that print demands. Together, they’re a powerful combination.

If you’re based in Toronto and looking for a custom mural for your business or event space, feel free to get in touch. And if you’re an artist who found this helpful — share it, bookmark it, and feel free to reach out with questions. More process posts coming soon. — Ameer Ali - Toronto Mural Artist

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