Saturday, January 19, 2008

Roots to Grow, Wings to Fly


Illahee Elementary School in Camas, Washington



This is the third of the elementary school murals. The first one was about twelve years ago at Fisher's Landing Elementary in Vancouver. They wanted a professional-looking mural and they also wanted all the schoolchildren to participate in its creation. My solution was this:
  • The school decides on a theme
  • All the children do drawings of what they'd like to see in the mural, based on the theme
  • I design the mural based on the children's concepts
  • I transfer the outlines to the wall and block in base colors
  • Each child paints using a Q-tip, one dot at a time, to fill in more colors
  • I paint detail areas such as faces and lettering.
  • A month after completion, the mural is clear-coated for protection.

It was a great experience for everyone at Fisher's Landing--the children were excited to be working on a project this big, the faculty and staff also participated by painting dots and supporting the entire process, and the finished mural looks fantastic.

This mural at Illahee is nine feet tall and eighty feet long and was completed in April 2007. It took a little over a month.



1 comment:

Heather said...

I'm glad to see an action shot of YOU! I'm grateful someone took a picture of you doing your work.