Enjoying a brush with social media fame

With a spatula, some brushes and buckets of lime plaster-like paint, a thin girl uses her magic to embellish white walls with vibrant and colorful murals, giving them infinite charm. With the help of video sharing platform TikTok, she is able to share her painting process, and the finished artworks, with the public.

Zhang Lijia, 25, is the artist and vlogger that has mesmerized over 6 million followers on TikTok. Most of her works are murals for home and office decoration depicting classic chinoiserie, such as landscapes with splendid mountains and rivers, vivid lotuses, deer and peacocks. Sometimes, she paints portraits and cartoons commissioned by her clients.

"Murals convey good messages. For example, the deer represents good luck and longevity, and the peacock implies wealth and auspiciousness," Zhang says, adding that the murals embody blessings and wishes for a better life, expressing a hope that more people will see the beauty of the paintings and welcome their wishes of good fortune into their own homes.

"One person, six days, 40,000 yuan ($6,159)"－one of her most widely viewed videos shows that although it is not easy work, mural painting is highly paid and enables Zhang to enjoy financial independence.

Zhang often spends hours on scaffolding, allowing her to paint the higher areas of a mural. It takes days to finish a mural, and the hours of brushwork leaves her hands and clothes stained with paint.

"When painting murals, I look no different from a plasterer, and the first time I climbed up a scaffold, I was scared. Now, however, it is just an everyday occurrence."

Mural painting, like most art, can be time-consuming. Zhang first draws the design on the wall with chalk, before using a spatula or putty knife to apply white paint from which she can form details with a relief effect, like petals and mountains. After polishing the surface, she will add color to the image and apply a protective layer of lacquer to ensure the mural's longevity.

It might seem boring to some, but as a mural artist who is passionate about her work, Zhang says that, when painting on the wall, all of her attention is directed to each stroke of the brush. "Painting calms me down and I feel like the whole world falls into silence," she explains.

Zhang's fascination for painting dates back to her childhood, when she spent much of her leisure time drawing.

"I liked copying the illustrations in my textbooks and, while I was in high school, I made up my mind to study art."

However, that meant expensive fees and intensive, closed-off training, Zhang recalls that she would sometimes draw until two or three o'clock in the morning.

"I often fell asleep in class and the teacher would tap my head," she recounts, adding that she believes that success comes with persistent practice.

She is not sure if she is gifted at painting, but Zhang has the courage of her convictions and her passion for the art has motivated her to persist with it until now.

In 2013, after embarking on a major in apparel design at Wuyi University in Jiangmen city, Guangdong province, to cover her living expenses, Zhang took part-time jobs, including work as a model, receptionist and handing out leaflets.

One such assignment offered her the opportunity to paint decorative murals on the walls of a company's office. Despite having little technical knowledge about painting murals, Zhang and three of her classmates managed to finish the work. During the process, she felt that murals with a relief effect could prove popular.

Painting murals is similar with clothing design, and the relief effect, she suggests, is similar to draping fabric.

After working at a paint company for several years, she resigned and began to paint murals on her own. Ever since, Zhang has traveled across the country, painting over 500 murals along the way.

In 2018, Zhang began to share her painting process on TikTok, and beyond her expectation, her videos attracted an increasing number of viewers, with some even commissioning her to produce custom pieces.

"Painting murals and taking videos are the things I'm interested in. While the painting provides the material for my videos, my videos bring me opportunities to travel to various places and meet many skilled mural painters," she notes.

"The classic style of mural adheres to traditional Chinese aesthetic standards, while younger clients prefer a more modern and simple style," she says.

Most of her murals are designs made to the requirements of her clients, Zhang says, adding that getting the chance to create more original murals is her goal.

Since the internet made her an overnight sensation, she received an invitation to create an original mural for a town in Mianzhu city, Sichuan province.

At the beginning of 2021, Zhang and her friends spent five days creating the painting in Qingping, a town which was hit hard by the devastating earthquake in 2008.

On an outdoor wall of more than 40 square meters, they painted a reclining girl with a smile on her face, falling asleep while cradling a cute panda that is holding some bamboo.

She smiles because she dreams about a fairy-tale world, and the bamboo represents the perseverance of people in Mianzhu, who never gave up hope and turned their once ruined home into a prosperous city, Zhang explains.

"It was an impressive experience, we gathered in the town, overcame the bad weather conditions and created a fairy tale," she says, adding that the mural expresses her respect and love for the people of Mianzhu.

The experience reinforced her desire to create more original murals, and, according to Zhang, her fans have also given her the courage and strength to do more.

While providing a training class to promote the art to those interested in mural painting, she says she will also paint murals in her own style, adapting them to meet changing aesthetics of the public and different generations.

Speaking of her busy work schedule, Zhang concludes that, instead of staying in her well-paid comfort zone, she is choosing to move forward and push herself to new heights.