The JunkMan’s Daughter Mural – Seven Weeks and a Thousand Brushstrokes | Kyle "BlackCatTips" Brooks

The JunkMan’s Daughter Mural – Seven Weeks and a Thousand Brushstrokes

November 5, 2026

Many months ago, I was asked by the owner of Junkman’s Daughter if I would be interested in painting the store. I said, “YES.” I had met him through my project for ASH Coffee a couple years earlier, and we had sparked a friendship.

I was intimidated by taking on such a project. The size alone was an issue, and then the visibility and the iconic status of the store itself were all things I began to worry over. I wanted to dream up something that was the best I could do, something that would reflect the store itself and the feelings and vibe of the Little Five Points neighborhood and community.

I spent many months drawing ideas and revising the ideas. I had many piles of sketches. The owner and I worked together to make this piles of papers turn into one agreed upon concept. I really appreciate him going with my artistic vision on most all of it. He really put a lot of faith in what I wanted to do.

The first day I got there was very sunny and very hot. I remember the giant yellow wall in the sun being blindingly bright. A crew had already painted the base colors, yellow and mint green, so that was done when I got there.

I had a hydraulic lift to use too. I thought I might be worried about working up high, but it really wasn’t a big deal, and I grew to enjoy it. It had its benefits too. Being off the ground and working by myself helped me focus, and I never really got dirty because I never got down on the ground.

I began to sweat in the heat and sun as I found the center of the building and began to sketch out the logo. I used a paint marker to trace out the letters and the big shapes. My friend Angie had told me about this trick. I was going to use some of my children’s sidewalk chalk, but the marker was better, and it didn’t mix into the paint like chalk does.

I painted the logo first. I wanted people to know the name of the store while I worked on the rest. I thought, “What if I don’t return? How would people know what the store was?” I figured it was best to put that up first, since it was just a big yellow wall.

Then we started making a lot of big blobs of color, sort of like a lava lamp up on the wall. Big organic shapes bubbling all over the wall. Angie helped me with this part too. She helped me paint the background and guided me through my initial process, as I was worried about many of the steps. We painted in the black sky and the big blobs of color over the yellow. We worked on this part for about a week in the hot September sun. I was thankful for all the dry weather but it sure was warm!

After several days of painting the background and color blobs, it was time to start drawing the characters. This was very intimidating to me because of the scale. With the lift so close to the wall, I couldn’t back away and get a good look at what I’d done. I’d have to come down and go out to the parking lot, then come back and ride up again to work.

I wanted to get my drawings accurate on the wall. I wanted them to be the right size and I wanted them to reflect the sketches and the spirit of the concept. I had color printouts of the drawings I had made on my iPad. I had the whole thing sketched out, so it wasn’t like it was going to be a mystery. Angie encouraged me to start with one of my big characters, so I did that.

I used my new VR goggles, which let me see my drawings overlaid on the wall. I could adjust the size and position, then do a quick sketch with my markers to get the borders of each character. I took the goggles off and got my red paint out. I looked at my sketches and my color printouts and began to paint the shapes.

First I painted one giant face. It felt really good. Then I painted another. Then I painted another, and the next thing you knew, I had a whole section done!

So that’s how I did it. One section, then the next section, and on and on I went. I worked across the top from the center to the left, and then I painted the top right section. Before you knew it, I had the whole top section done. Then I went back and added a few more details. Later on, I painted the lower section and the columns and the very bottom with plants and totem pole trees.

One of the most interesting parts of working in Little Five Points is the people you meet and the people who come to see you. Right from the start, people went out of their way to come and see me, tell me nice things, and encourage me about my art. This really helped me out and made me feel like I was doing a good job. I had told people online I was working there, and people would honk the horns on the street and go out of their way to stop. This meant so much.

There were all kinds of people to look at too. People with green hair and blue hair and pink hair. People with fishnet hose. Some people had painted faces like clowns. Some people had on bizarre outfits that I don’t even know what they were called.

There were a lot of people walking down the sidewalk, and a lot of people would yell up to me in my hydraulic lift too. But when I got done with the lift and had to work down on the ground, that was a whole different story. I was way more accessible to the people walking by, who had many things to say.

Some people asked me for money. I made friends with one man and would buy him a Coke every day—well, several days. I met a lady named Colleen who had a lot of stories to tell me. I met a man named Mark Anthony. I would see the regular folks every day passing by like they were on a schedule. I guess I was on a schedule too.

After working for many weeks, with a break of a week or ten days somewhere in the middle, I had about finished the mural. I’d walk out in the parking lot or across the road and check it all out to see how it really looked to people passing by in cars and walking down the sidewalks. It looks really different when you get farther away. I think it was eighty feet long, with the top about twenty feet off the ground, and I had painted the bottom sections too. So it’s kind of funny to paint it with tiny brushes at some points, but then it’s something you can see from far away.

I really like the way the bright colors changed the look of the whole store. I think at first people were taken aback by the big yellow wall. They didn’t know what was going to happen, and a lot of them seemed worried. But I think in the end, all my bright colors and happy faces and weird looks helped people feel more confident that remaking the building was a positive move.

The old building had started to fall apart. It needed some structural work, and some holes had formed in the wall. The spaceship on the old storefront had water damage and was falling apart so it was removed. The store needed some help and some love, so I’m hoping all my work really helped it out. They got a new awning, and it matches the mural really great.

When people see the finished mural, I hope they’re amazed. I hope they feel some sort of mental invigoration with all the faces and the colors and everything going on. The owner had told me from the start he wanted sort of a “character chaos.” So I took that as meaning a lot of faces and a lot of things going on, a lot of expressions. I wanted it to be a mural where people would see something, and then when they came back by, they’d see something else. And maybe later, one day, they’d see something else. Always something new they missed before.

I did the best painting job I could do. I pushed the paint down into all the little holes of the stucco. I painted in all the little edges and filled in all the little lines. A new friend I made, a sign painter, had given me a neat brush to use, and that really helped me out. It was a cheap brush off of Amazon, but it was really great for painting on lumpy stucco. I liked that a lot.

We also put a clear coat sealer on the mural to help protect it from the sun and hopefully make it last longer.

When you paint a big project like this, I feel like there’s a sadness with finishing it. You get so used to and happy to be there, and it’s like a regular work schedule. Then all of a sudden you’re finished, and you have to go away. You have to leave your work and all those happy faces you painted. But I was also very happy moment and I was very pleased to be finished — so it’s a real mixed bag of emotions. It’s hard to just put down your brushes and walk away. At least is its for me.

Now that the whole mural is finished and the brushes have been washed and my paints have been put away, I’d like to thank Moss, the owner, and all the folks at Junkman’s Daughter for trusting me with their building. It took such a long time for us to get ready, and it really took a long time to paint it. But now that it’s finished, I’m very happy with it, and I hope they are too.

I’d like to thank my friend Angie for helping me paint the background. I’d also like to thank the Little Five Points community for all their encouragement, and all those people who went out of their way to come by and thank me for doing this project and tell me how good of a job I was doing. That meant the world to me.

I learned a lot during this project. I have painted many murals, but there’s always something to learn, and this one taught me a lot.

I hope this painting is going to bring people a lot of smiles and make them feel curious to look at it a little bit longer. I hope it’s going to help out the Junkman’s Daughter store, and I hope it’ll be a great painting for a new generation of Little Five Points fans.

It’s very much an honor to do a project like this, and I’m very thankful that it happened.

To see the mural for yourself, you can check it out at464 Moreland Ave NE, Atlanta, GA 30307, USA.