The Heart of Very Gay Paint Is a Home in L.A.

“We paint things in a way that is very gay.”

Sit on that Instagram bio line, think about it, and visualize your own very gay painting. Chances are, you are not making a mental image of anything Nicholas Scheppard and Jenson Titus have put up on a wall and, honestly, that’s the beauty of it. The two painters met as comedians—something they still very much are—and have since gracefully stumbled into owning a business called Very Gay Paint. The focus? Celebrating queer joy and designing murals for clients' homes that just make them happy.

Let’s paint a visual: The designs favor sharp geometric patterns (as seen here in RuPaul’s dining room), curved arches, sunrise/sunset color palettes, and lots of stripes. They cover swaths of wall space in rolling hills of color. It’s not often you’ll find a tiny mural from Very Gay Paint, and I dare you to try and find an out-of-place brushstroke: “My immediate reaction is to like murals to look like it was printed on the wall by a robot,” says Titus. “But now I really value the tiny mistakes because it makes it human—it's more charming. And I think actually more aesthetically pleasing than perfection.”

But to understand how they got to the level of painting a wall at Jason Mraz’s avocado farm (this really happened), we have to jump back to 2018. After being introduced by a friend in Philadelphia, the two hit it off and ended up in L.A. after a few months. Titus had already been formally scheming a move to the west coast—the plot twist was that three months later, Scheppard decided to make it part of his plan after they had gone on a handful of dates. With a background in comedy (stand-up and clowning), the duo continued on the west coast. “We just have a natural comedic chemistry that you can’t force with somebody,” says Scheppard. “My favorite part of our partnership is knowing that if we have to make some shit up fast, we can make it funny.”

The first moments of Very Gay Paint happened in their shared basement studio apartment in Silver Lake. They started cultivating the space during the onset of the COVID-19 lockdown after a brief break in Las Vegas to spend time with family. In a moment of “wait, they’re just like us,” Scheppard started posting photos of the lockdown murals that came out of this nesting moment on his personal Instagram account and quickly gained attention for his designs. They ran out of their own walls to paint, and friends came asking for them to recreate the magic on unknown canvases.

Since these first personal projects, the Scheppard and Titus have been creating upwards of four murals a month (for names like Trixie Mattel, Lance Bass, and Darren Criss). They’ve also got a book, A Very Gay Book: An Inaccurate Resource for Gay Scholars, and a rug collaboration based on one of their designs with NYC-based studio J.D. Staron. On top of the comedy bits we see glimpses of on Instagram—I recommend checking out their unexpected home tour and a moment with Bob the Drag Queen—there’s no denying they’ve got a lot going on.

To dig further into this unlikely combination of comedy and mural art, I spoke with the pair about embracing passion projects once they start to snowball, their favorite murals, and the home that holds the very heart of Very Gay Paint.

So, when did Very Gay Paint grow out of “just for fun” territory and into a business?

Nic: Honestly, I was sick of posting photos of the murals on my Instagram—my account should be about me. I knew I needed a separate one for the paint projects that Jens and I were doing together—very quickly it just snowballed. It seemed like we would do one and two more would appear. The social media pages grew and people who had bigger followings were hiring us… and all of a sudden this was our full-time job.

You’ve done a bunch of murals at this point—tell me about your favorite ones.

Jenson: Ok, I know mine. I had just moved into a new place in Highland Park, and I didn't understand why I couldn't sleep in my bedroom. Then we painted a mural in there and I was like, oh my god. I slept so much better and I was excited to wake up. I didn't realize how much impact the murals have on a room until that moment, it really showed me how valuable art is in a space.

Nic: There's a mural that we did in La Quinta pretty early that I love. Design-wise, I think it's probably the one I'm most proud of—it ended up becoming one of our rug designs. I don’t have a graphic design background; I just sort of fudge my way through it. I design all of our stuff and this one has really amazing compositional work. We did it for someone in our first year of muraling, and stayed at her house and painted for her—she's since become one of our best friends. That experience fucking rules because we just got to meet during this time when people weren't getting to meet each other and we made some really amazing connections. I'm actually getting lunch with her today, and I’m going to her wedding in Morocco.

All of your work, which is seriously impressive, carries a lighthearted vibe. How does comedy still play into your mural art?

Jenson: Well, at first it was the Instagram captions that carried most of the humor. And then I was like, ‘Why don't we make some stupid videos?’ because I was doing a lot of character work online. That went really well and we decided to get a bit more intentional and funnel in some of our other skills from the comedy world and make these really sharp, world-building videos around these two characters. It's been wild to see what social media perception does.

Realizing that Nic and I created characters of ourselves, we started to separate ourselves from them and that was really healthy. It’s been interesting to start to craft the world of Very Gay Paint, not only through design but a comedy lens. I don’t want to say it's not a real brand because it is, but everything is irreverent and has a wink to it.”

I know you recently moved into a new home, Jenson, but the space Nic has is essentially a Very Gay Paint museum of sorts, right?

Nic: Yeah, my interior impulses are sort of always morphing. I go through seasons of being like, ‘This is the coolest thing.’ And I can't afford to renovate the space every time I have a new idea. The living area is very sunset-y and it’s got this ‘70s Los Angeles retro vibe. The bedroom has a lot more beige-y, taupe-y amorphous blob colors. It's very soft—and there's a mural in there that reflects that.

There was the phase where all of our murals sort of felt like they lived in the same world as Block Shop Textiles. That was sort of happening for me design-wise when we were getting furniture for the bathroom so that space has kind of that minimalist, geometric feel. Since then, I've been doing a lot of crafting [Ed note: Nic is an aspiring woodworker] so the office is an absolute disaster and covered in woodworking supplies, sewing supplies, and makeup. It’s a showcase of every interest I've had in the last like year.

And tell me about your new space, Jenson. What’s your vision for it?

Jenson: It's a style of home that we haven't really gotten into before, which I'm excited about. It’s got these Spanish tiles—very hacienda. I'm excited to do like a lime wash, maybe a more organic colorblock mural in here, which we haven't done before. That would be great for us to expand our repertoire, which is how it always works. We don't intentionally try to expand, it's more like ‘whatever is there, let's make this work.’ And that'll teach us how to do this style. I think it's a really cool way to learn because we're not like, this is what we want to be doing and we want to be so good at. It's just like… we like it. And that leaves more room for it to be fun and experimental. There's really not a lot of ego involved in it.

Nic: It's a lot of freedom to let us just feel like a student the whole time.

Would you consider painting a low-budget way to transform a room?

Jenson: Obviously, there are levels to it. Yeah, you can make your own design and paint it. It might not look perfect or professionally done, but most people aren't going to notice that. I think it's such a great way to change the space.”

Nic: It's only expensive in terms of time. It’s also the reason we were able to have such success: overhead is almost nothing. Even if you mess up, fixing your mess will cost $40, or just the cost of your base color. Murals don't take as much paint as painting a full wall, so ok, maybe you blow it, but fixing your mistake is less than $100 bucks. You can just paint over it.

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