How to make a collective artwork using the ‘Find Your Courage’ mural as a step-by-step creative guide with collaborative art techniques.

How to Make a Collective Artwork: A Step-by-Step Guide Using the ‘Find Your Courage’ Mural

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Quick Takeaway

Curious about how to make a collective artwork? In this post, you’ll see step-by-step how the Find Your Courage mural was created using my Pattern Play Collaborative Art framework. I’ve guided over 60 community and school-based projects with more than 2,000 participants, and I want to help you do the same with my helpful digital resources. You’ll learn simple, practical ways to involve everyone and create a shared artwork that shines!

Underpainting ready for Messy Playing - added decorative patterns and bold shapes over a cosmic underpainting in a large-scale collaborative artwork.
Close-up of a collaborative mural with textured layers of teal, pink, and purple marks created through Messy Playing.
Subtle glitter accents and personal decorative marks in the final mural stage from a group painting session.

Pattern Play Collaborative Art is a joyful, beginner-friendly way to bring people together through painting. It’s my signature method for guiding collective visual art projects, and it’s built around three simple, creative stages: Messy Playing, Exploring, and Bling.

This step-by-step guide shares exactly how to make a collective artwork using that process — including tips, examples, and real-life insight from the Find Your Courage mural.

That mural — 2 metres high and 7 metres wide — was created over five weeks by 20 teen girls aged 15-17. Through shared painting sessions, layered textures, and shimmering details, we built something magnificent and meaningful together.

If you’re curious about how to create a collective artwork that’s inclusive, expressive, and engaging for all skill levels, this is for you.

How To Make A Collective Artwork: Planning

Every successful collective visual art project begins with a clear intention and a flexible plan. That’s the heart of my method, called Pattern Play Collaborative Art.

In this approach, flexibility is built in — but the clear intention is always to give participants ownership, agency, and ultimately, the courage to try new things. When people help create a mural together in public, they often walk away with a new sense of creative confidence.

Pattern Play Collaborative Art unfolds in three simple stages: Messy Playing, Exploring, and Bling. These stages guide painters of all ages and abilities to build up layers, follow their instincts, and contribute freely, without fear of doing it “wrong.”

In the case of the Find Your Courage mural — a large-scale collective painting project with 20 teenaged girls — the plan was simple:

  • Start with a unifying underpainting – primer over the old mural then tinted primer as our second coat.
  • Invite playful mark-making through guided collective painting activities – Messy Playing with marks and circles.
  • Encourage pattern repetition and experimentation with Pattern Play Exploration.
  • Finish with highlights, shimmer, and detailed ornamentation in the BLING stage.
Teen girls using rollers to apply thick primer during mural prep — the first step in how to make a collective artwork.
Side angle of girls painting a mural wall with tinted primer using rollers as part of a collaborative artwork process.

This kind of planning isn’t rigid — it’s a loose framework designed to welcome all kinds of participation. If you’re wondering how to create a collective artwork that feels inclusive, empowering, and joyful, starting with these three stages gives you a strong foundation.

Art preparation table with paint trays and rollers ready for use in a group mural painting session.
Close-up of prep table with paint cups and house brushes, used in the first step of creating a collaborative artwork.

How To Make A Collective Artwork: Underpainting

Teen girls creating the underpainting for a collective artwork using soft gradients of blue and violet in the 'Find Your Courage' mural project.
Group of teen girls collaborating on a large canvas during a social art project using the Pattern Play Collaborative Art approach.
Underpainting ready for Messy Playing - added decorative patterns and bold shapes over a cosmic underpainting in a large-scale collaborative artwork.
Close-up of a blended galaxy-style background in a collaborative mural, featuring charcoal lines and layered blue-violet hues.

How To Make A Collective Artwork: Underpainting

Before the fun begins, we create an underpainting — a base layer that helps unify the final piece.

For the ‘Find Your Courage’ mural, we painted the whole wall with white primer using rollers and house brushes. This gives the girls ownership of the entire process from preparation to final bling layers.

Then we painted soft gradients using large brushes and sponges in shades of light blue, light violet, and a charcoal meandering line representing the milky way’s depths. This formed the cosmic background on which all the later layers would shine with our ‘Galaxy’ colour scheme.

Collective painting lessons often emphasise this step as a great way to build confidence — everyone contributes in a loose, abstract way without needing to “get it right.” It’s relaxing and gives the whole piece a beautiful, blended foundation.

How To Make A Collective Artwork: Messy Playing

Group of girls painting freely together in a large collaborative mural, enjoying the Messy Playing stage.
Teen girls painting overlapping swirls and marks during the Messy Playing stage of how to make a collective artwork.
Detail of overlapping brush marks and circles in soft blue, teal, and violet, part of a collective artwork mural.
Close-up of a collaborative mural with textured layers of teal, pink, and purple marks created through Messy Playing.
Layered marks bring energy to how to make a collective artwork.

Messy Playing is all about letting go of perfection and enjoying the process. In this phase of the mural, the girls painted swirls, splashes, circles, and arches in lighter galaxy tones — pinks, teals, purples and blues— layering marks to create texture and energy. I primed the surface with large chalk circles and arches to get them started – this session was called our “Go BIG and Make Your Mark” day. The goal of this was to encourage the girls to really get into the creativity and power of painting out in public on a large artwork. To find their courage!

These kinds of collective painting activities are ideal for getting everyone involved, especially those new to art. They allow for freedom, expression, and a sense of playful exploration.

Everyone’s contribution matters, and because the marks overlap and blend, the artwork feels unified from the beginning.

How To Make A Collective Artwork: Exploring

Spirals and dotted accents painted in layers as part of a large collaborative artwork.
A mix of small detailed patterns and large sweeping shapes in a painted mural panel.
Organic painted shapes layered over a soft blue-violet background during mural pattern exploration.

After the first layers are down, it’s time to start playing with more patterns and circles! We did two weeks of circle and pattern play, using the Easy Pattern Play Pages that I have developed to give hesitant painters easy creative confidence. During this stage, the group explored ways to connect shapes, repeat patterns, and build clusters of marks. They ranged across the surface, changing colours and shapes, doing individual or group combinations. It was like they all did a dozen artworks, super-charging their confidence as they created together!

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Simple hand-drawn patterns repeated across a painted background, created in a collective art mural.
Abstract mural section with bold patterned contrasts and blended colour transitions.
Visual textured mural detail with circular motifs layered over brushy backgrounds during the Exploring stage.

Using inspiration from collective painting examples, we encouraged the girls to try new things — like layering spirals over smudges, or repeating a pattern in different sizes and colours, up high and down low.

This is where creative confidence grows. Participants start to trust their instincts, add more meaningful details, exploring their own creative flair. Collective art activities like these go beyond just painting as participants have the opportunity to experiment within the safety of an immense artwork and the safety of a group.

Repeating brush marks in soft pinks, purples, and blues showing a playful part of a collaborative mural.
Detail of painted pattern clusters in pink, teal, and violet from a mural exploring how to make a collective artwork.
Overlapping painted circles and spirals in layered colours as part of exploring how to make a collective artwork.

How To Make A Collective Artwork: Bling

Shapes outlined and enhanced with paint pen sparkle during the final Bling phase of a group mural.
Paint pen clusters added over galaxy inspired colours during the Bling phase of a collaborative artwork.
Fine paint pen detailing added over colourful painted patterns in the Bling stage of a group mural.

The final stage — what we call Bling! — is where everything comes to life.

For this mural, the group added highlights with paint pens, including fine metallic paint pens, adding subtle glitter accents. They outlined shapes, added fine detailed versions of the patterns used in the other stages, and created bursts of detail all across the mural.

This part of the process makes the whole mural shine — both literally and emotionally. It gives participants a chance to finesse details and add their signature touches to the piece.

All of my collective painting workshops end with a Bling session, as it helps people feel extra proud of what they’ve helped create, as it’s so much fun adding decorative details.

Subtle glitter accents and personal decorative marks in the final mural stage from a group painting session.
Outlined swirls and shapes in silver paint pen from the final mural layer, enhancing a collective artwork with bling details.
Metallic paint pen highlights and tiny dot patterns added in the BLING stage of a mural showing how to make a collective artwork shine.

How To Make A Collective Artwork: In Conclusion

Making a collective artwork isn’t about perfection — it’s about connection, contribution, and creative joy. Whether you’re leading collective painting sessions or simply looking for inspiration to try your first group mural, the process can be magical.

The ‘Find Your Courage’ mural is just one example of what can happen when you invite people to create together. With some thoughtful planning, guided phases, and playful activities, you can create something meaningful that everyone is proud of.

So grab my Pattern Play Pages (the ones I used with the kids for this project) or my Pattern Play Cards, collect your brushes and external paints, gather your group, and start painting – together.

Happy Painting!

Charndra,

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