After a year spent working from a spare bedroom in her house, illustrator Justyna Green decided it was time to tackle the “bare walls” she’d spent most of lockdown surrounded by.

“I’d been working on the iPad, digitally, and everything was on Instagram and really tiny,” she tells CR. “[I thought] I’m feeling creative, I’m here every single day, so why not turn the walls into something else and make my illustrations bigger. [I wanted to] see how they work in that space, what I could do with paints – with actual materials, not on a screen – and move in the day as well, because being an illustrator is very sedentary and on the screen.”

Green pushed her desk into the middle of the room, put her music on, got the paintbrushes out, and started creating a set of murals that spans all four walls of the room. There’s five pieces in total, designed as a series of steps towards better self-kindness and wellbeing. Green says it’s turned what had previously felt like a spare bedroom into a studio space, and given her a new enthusiasm for working at a larger scale.

Green, who also hosts the On Design podcast, isn’t the only creative to tackle the walls around her. Last year, CR interviewed Marina Willer and Stuart Watson about getting rid of their TV, and turning their home into a huge family art experiment. Artist Shantell Martin has spoken about moving to New York and drawing on the walls of her apartment. And designer Anna Jacobs has amassed almost 40k followers on Instagram for her vibrant flat, which is filled with striking colour contrasts and hand-painted murals.