Ashfield Play Forum – Storybook Community Mural
Hand-painted mural for a community play space
Project Overview
This hand-painted mural was created for Ashfield Play Forum in Sutton-in-Ashfield, transforming the wall into a playful and welcoming feature inspired by storytelling, creativity, and community.
Ashfield Play Forum wanted something that felt warm, imaginative, and representative of what they do. The final design combines storybook-style illustration with elements that reflect the organisation itself, including creativity, play, family support, shared space, and the use of toys and materials through their scrapstore and community sessions.
The Concept
The mural was designed to feel friendly, creative, and easy to connect with for both children and adults.
Key ideas included:
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A large central tree to act as the main visual anchor
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Storybook-style animals and playful illustrated details
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Toys and creative materials to reflect the scrapstore and play-based environment
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A welcoming natural setting using grass, sky, and soft colour
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Ashfield Play Forum branding worked into the final piece
The aim was to create something that represented not just the visual identity of the space, but also the atmosphere of it: community-led, imaginative, supportive, and full of creativity.
Style & Approach
The mural was painted in a soft, illustrative style with a storybook feel.
This approach included:
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Hand-painted organic shapes and textures
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Soft blue sky and green landscape tones
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Layered leaf textures built from multiple greens
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Character-based details to make the mural feel playful
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Selective darker outlines rather than harsh black linework
Originally, I considered outlining the mural in black, similar to some of my window painting work. However, once I began adding facial details, it became clear that strong black outlines felt too harsh against the softer storybook colour palette. Instead, I used darker tones within each object or character to define edges more naturally.
Day 1 &2
The first stage focused on blocking in the main background colours, with blue for the sky and green for the grass to create a calm base. From there, I began painting the tree canopy using circular shapes and different greens as an underlayer, before moving onto the tree trunk and building up the bark with layered browns, swirls, and woodgrain-inspired marks.
A big part of the process involved moving constantly between different sections of the mural, reusing mixed colours across the wall and gradually building the whole piece together rather than finishing one area at a time. This meant switching between the tree, animals, signage, sky, and smaller props as the mural developed.
Process
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The project started with a digital sketch created on my iPad in Procreate. Once the design was approved, I used VR projection to scale and position the drawing accurately onto the wall. This allowed me to transfer the composition from screen to wall while keeping proportions and placement consistent.
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The wall and windows were then masked using tape before painting began.
Day 3 & 4
With access to a ladder, I was able to mask and paint right up to the top edge of the wall, which helped frame the mural properly and improved the overall finish.
I also added more depth to the tree canopy, using varied greens and energetic brushwork to make the leaves feel fuller and more alive.The final stages focused on the characters, toys, accessories, and branding details. Bright primary colours were brought in through the toys and materials, inspired by the colours used in the Ashfield Play Forum logo. This helped tie the mural back to their identity while keeping the whole piece playful and child-friendly. The logo itself was painted at the end to complete the mural and firmly connect it to the space.
The Outcome
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The finished mural creates a strong visual feature within the space while also helping communicate what Ashfield Play Forum is about.
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It feels welcoming, creative, and community-focused, with enough storybook charm to appeal to children while still looking considered and professional as a large-scale wall piece.
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As my first mural at this scale, the project was also an important step in developing my mural practice, combining what I already knew from illustration, window painting, and smaller wall-based work into a much larger environment.
Project Details
Client: Ashfield Play Forum
Location: Sutton-in-Ashfield
Type: Hand-painted mural
Category: Community / Interior mural / Storybook illustration
This video shows the full process of creating a large-scale storybook mural for Ashfield Play Forum in Sutton in Ashfield. From digital design in Procreate to projecting the sketch onto the wall using VR, it follows each stage of the mural from masking and blocking colours through to detailed painting and final touches. The design was created to reflect community, creativity, and play, featuring illustrated animals, a central tree, and colourful elements inspired by the organisation’s branding.