Making Progress!
So if you haven’t noticed already, the construction wall mural is coming along so well—and quickly too! As I explained in the post about the planning process of the study for this mural, the collage was a highly collaborative process, with the students working together to make one cohesive design. After the design was completed and Xeroxed, the collage was clipped into 30 different sections, which proved to be a much more involved process than you would think! The sections were then gridded into a one-inch (on paper) to one-foot (the actual wall) scale and each student was assigned one 4x8 section to work from. Especially since the weather had been so bad the few weeks before, the students seemed very anxious and eager to get out there and actually begin painting. The first step was for each student to grid his/her panel (4x8 ft.) on the actual wall (I got to do one too! Although I admit I worked at a snail’s pace…), which they already painted a light gray color when they were still planning the study. After that, they sketched in their specific design, according to the grid, which required everyone to use ladders to reach the top sections of their panels. By the end of the first day, most students completed penciling in their designs and one or two even started to paint! For this mural, (besides the gray background) the only paint we are using is black exterior house paint, which certainly has its advantages, but also disadvantages. Student Lucy Gaines says that liked working with the just black because it “made the process a lot quicker and makes the mural look really graphic, so that even when you see it across campus it really stands out—in a way, it doesn’t really even need more than one color.” However, she also found it perhaps too close to feeling like drawing rather than painting, and she is excited to work with multiple colors and solve issues of blending and color choice.
Devon, Julia, Lizz, Lucy and Brannen making some serious progress on the second paint day...
More posts from
