A tender summer's day (2025) by Ayonti Mahreen Huq and Nancy Correia. Photo credit: MUR/ALL .

Recently, I had the wonderful opportunity to work on my first mural project with the MUR/ALL Collective (@murallcollective). The collective is led by Wenting Li (@wentingthings), Edan Maxam (@eedzmaximus), and Caitlin Taguibao (@taggybowow), and the final piece I created was a collaborative work with the talented Nancy Correia (@nvn.ce).

The mural is located on the back-alley wall of the 918 Bathurst Centre for Culture, Arts, Media, and Education. The full address is 918 Bathurst St, Toronto, ON M5R 3G5 (Map details here).

About the Mural

'A tender summer's day' is a whimsical reflection of friendship and collaboration from a female gaze by artists Ayonti Mahreen Huq and Nancy Correia. The two friends in the piece find themselves in a soft, tender moment enjoying each other's company. Their warmth and gentle vibration is equally reciprocated by the fun and vibrant background where Miss Sun and the butterflies tenderly watch them. The final piece also reflects the artists' design process, where both operated from a free flow approach, guided by love, trust, and appreciation of both artists' unique styles.

Project Structure

There was a total of eight participating artists and the project was structured in the following ways:
- Series of 2 skills-building workshops
- A community consultation workshop
- 2-day production to produce the mural

The Workshops

The workshops focused on bringing the artists together, educating us about the basics of murals as well as how to apply for such programs. The presentations were thorough, with real-life examples from the facilitators themselves, as well as an in-depth presentation by April (@p.omelo), a previous participant of the program.

This was also when artists were divided into three groups for the three murals to be made. I am lazy, so I left it to the facilitators to group me intuitively (always leave it to the smarter folks!). And there I was, grouped with my sweet lil mamacita Nancy!

Snapshot of my figure from the group painting activity during the workshops. I love how Miss Demon Spider has cute lil friends and many flowers (painted by other participating artists)! We all painted over each other's pieces and turned it into a mega collaborative painting.

Community Day

In addition to the workshops, the MUR/ALL collective also hosted a community day which was open to the public. We had artist Maya Gonzo (@gonzomaya) as a guest speaker to discuss the history of 918 Bathurst (which was originally a Japanese Buddhist temple).

There was also community painting and a SUPER fun cyanotype workshop. It was my first time making a cyanotype piece, and it was a fascinating process to watch the ink dry and the objects create negative space within the ink structure.

La Diabla (2025) by Ayonti Mahreen Huq

Bringing the Mural to Life - Production days

The final leg of the project was creating the mural itself within two days. Prior to those two days, we had about a week to plan, create, and submit our proposed design for approval. Nancy and I decided to do an open-flow structure to design the piece where we played around with characters and backgrounds randomly until it started to make sense. Most of it was freestyled, but we did agree to have two femmes in the design prior to starting the actual designing process.

Initial draft of A tender summer's day (2025) by Ayonti Mahreen Huq and Nancy Correia

I would love to say that it was easy peasy lemon squeezy, but it was not. It demanded a lot of quick wit and constant improvement from both Nancy and me, since we were both pressed for time and did not want to go through the hurdle of constant revisions. Add to that, unlike traditional structured work projects, creative projects require a lot of inner intuition and spark, which cannot be made available on demand, so I did find myself occasionally stressing out. Fortunately, Nancy and my Maa jumped in to give me love and support, and we ended up with our gorgeous beauty below!

Final approved version of A tender summer's day (2025) by Ayonti Mahreen Huq and Nancy Correia

Our design was, thankfully, approved without any need for revision.

Then came Paint Day 1! We came in early and got ready to PAINT!!

Nancy and I creating a doodle grid for our mural. Typically you use the spray paint doodles to guide where your design elements will go on the wall. Photo credit: MUR/ALL

We painted for a solid 5-6 hours each day. The first day we made a doodle grid and then started to lay down the basics of our design.

Typically, artists stick to their planned design for the mural (understandably so). But once I faced the wall, I realized I wanted to freestyle the psychedelic landscape instead, and Nancy and I started having fun and making our own creative iterations of the design elements while retaining the core integrity of the original approved design.

Note that this freedom might not always be there for all projects, so make sure you communicate it through with all strategic decision-makers prior to making any changes. We were very lucky and grateful to have cool mentors and facilitators!

This was our progress of the mural on Day 1. We really did power through.

Then we got ready for Paint Day 2. Both Nancy and I were determined to finish the piece that day, so we jumped on business ASAP.

Painting away in my MAN-REPELLENT hat! Photo credit: MUR/ALL

Hours of colour-mixing and countless brushes later, our pièce de résistance was ready!

Finished mural on Day 2! Frankly, the most stressful bit was incorporating my name and IG without bumping into Nancy, which obviously did happen because I love her and I am clingy (my distance estimate was not the best). Photo credit: MUR/ALL

Note how different the final mural looks from the initially approved design! Most of the changes came from freestyling, but we were also too tired and pressed for time to paint the vines. The blush on Miss Dove and the cunty red nails on Miss Lion are two of my absolute favourite details.

A piece of colourful love and joy now lives on a wall in Toronto! Another wonderful milestone in my journey as an artist.

All in all, this was such an amazing experience. I had made it a personal goal this year to expand my creativity into new formats, so seeing my full-scale work on a wall feels sooo cooooool. Go visit and take photos with our lovely psychedelic dreamscape featuring the pretty gworls and the sexy sun!

Huge thanks to Nancy, Caitlin, Edan, Wenting, and all the other incredible participating artists for this wonderful opportunity. Always a pleasure to create cool art.

Some personal observations regarding outdoor mural projects:

Mural work is labour-intensive. You will have to stand, bend, crouch, and lift extensively in an outdoor setting. Make sure to gear up accordingly, hydrate, and take breaks in between.
Prepare to deal with people’s varied range of curiosity. People will stop by to take photos, have a chat, or even start probing about the mural, who is funding it, etc. Be courteous but also know where to draw boundaries and report if you feel unsafe.
As with any creative project, be ready to accept feedback of all kinds, especially those from strategic non-artist stakeholders (e.g., the management of the property you will be working on). Having full creative discretion is a wonderful privilege, but at the end of the day, a project entails the opinions and consent of many parties, so the more flexible you are in taking feedback and making quick adjustments accordingly, the faster your design will move into the finalization process.
A pro tip to the above is also to consider if the client has any explicit no-gos in terms of the design process (e.g., any signs and symbols that they do not want on the murals). It’s best to leave those out of the design process or use your genius to incorporate subliminal resistance within the artwork.
If collaborating with another artist (especially on time-intensive projects like these), you need to be an active participant. Be transparent about your strengths and limitations and factor in both of your commitments to set realistic timelines. For example, in the context of this project, I have a full-time corporate job, so I was unable to be as flexible with in-person meetups. We got the design process done virtually through constant communication via Instagram and email, and by having a Google Slide deck to work on the design and provide comments/feedback simultaneously.

Thank you for reading about my wonderful mural adventure. Feel free to reach out to me if you have any comments or questions, and as always, please consider being a member so I can buy Christmas gifts for my two kids!

This is for the little girl who always kept drawing on the backs of notebooks. I love you.

My Maa and Khala (aunt) with the legendary mural!

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