We're at it again...mural painting with art club!

I'm super excited to say that we painting another mural this year...and it's HUGE!!  We are painting the entire wall in our cafeteria to look like a Paris city street.  I have a high school art club this year (with a few 7th and 8th graders mixed in) and we meet after school on Wednesdays for about an hour.  It's a super short period of time and I  feel like our progress is crawling, but I'm just excited to get to paint on a wall!!  Here's our progress so far!

We made sure to tape everything off so we didn't get in trouble for painting on the kick boards or the ceiling. ;)

The fountain is a work in progress...and the students decided that the sky needs some work.  They aren't happy with the clouds, and I fully support their decision.  I'm trying to be as hands off as possible for this, showing students some basic techniques to paint and letting them do most of the work.

Summer Program: Keith Haring Murals

Once again this year, we worked on expanding the Keith Haring-style murals we did the last two years.  This summer was most likely the last summer that we will receive the grant to do the summer program, and we had three panels left in the hallways at the little gym, so we decided to do three murals instead of one!

Needless to say, we didn't quite finish, so I will post the the final, touched up murals once school starts.  I plan on taking the painters who pay more attention to details to finish it up.  We had a lot of great painters this summer, but they started to trickle out of attendance and I was left with, well, the over-eager painters who didn't necessarily pay attention to paint drips on the floor and such.  Either way, I think we accomplished quite a bit for tackling three panels at once!

On Day 1, I drew out a beach scene and we started painting with Chroma Acrylic Mural Paint.

Day 2 continued with the beach scene, and I also added a winter scene and of course a hiking scene...because you can't live at the base of the Adirondacks without making art with mountains! ;)

The other two murals, which can be seen on "Our Completed Murals", were flat color.  For the beach scene, we decided to get a little more fancy and added some cool color blending in the big wave as well as sponge texture for the sand.

I think the beach mural is by far my favorite one of the entire group!  This one just needs a few black lines touched up and the sand redone.  We had some drips and when the student repainted over them, she didn't sponge the sand on the same way as she did the first time.  :-/

Again, these ones just need some touch up on the black lines and then the top coat of non-glossy acrylic.

Friday: Day 3 of Extended Mural

On Friday we managed to get quite a bit done on our mural!  We touched up some of the background and we were able to paint two coats on each of the figures!  Come Monday, we'll have to put a third coat on the yellow figures and the football, get a ladder to paint the top of the sky, and start outlining everything!

I think that we will paint a little bit more...I decided that I would like to do some mini paintings in the white areas above and below the window in between each mural...I envision a cloud bubble with a single physical activity in it...that way we can do the mountain climber, tennis player, roller-blader and soccer player!

We also had a bit of time to do some glazing on Friday.  I pulled out a set of bisque bowls and let the kids go to town glazing.  We used the detail writers and textured glazes that I mentioned in my last glaze post.  Some got real creative with their drips.  I can't wait to see how they turn out!

I also bought a set of 6 of the Mayco travel mugs for the teachers to glaze!

Extended Day: Extending our Mural!

Woohoo!  We were able to get permission to extend our Keith Haring mural that we did last year during the summer program!  Yesterday and today we worked on coming up with some more physical activity ideas to draw on the wall and we painted the background.

We started out by using these awesome manikans I bought from Dick Blick.  These are just the Blick brand 12", hardwood male manikans.  The kids LOVED using them!  They posed them in sports positions to brain-storm some physical activity ideas.

After we had a plan, we got the cart ready with our painting supplies and mural paint, and headed down the hallway!  We are using the Chroma Acrylic Mural Paint.

Last year I had the kids trace each other on butcher paper, cut out the figures and trace them on the wall themselves.  Last year it also took us the entire four weeks to paint the mural, so I decided to draw the figures on the wall quickly for the students so we could get right into painting.

The end of day one's painting progress...

The end of day 2...we did a second coat everywhere we could reach so everything wasn't streaky. We have a hoola-hooper, a volleyball player setting the ball, and a football player kicking a football through the field goal!  Depending on how their attention spans for this, if it only takes us two weeks to do this section, we may start a second section...students wanted to do a tennis player, a roller-blader and a mountain climber too!

Last year, even though I knew you should always start with the background first in a mural, we started painting the figures and did the background last.  This ended up being part of the problem as to why it took us so long to finish the first mural.  This time, I made sure we started with the background, and I also bought some new colors of mural paint so we wouldn't have to mix too many colors.  Last year, we mixed the blue for the sky and the different heat and humidity caused the paint to dry differently in the sky, even though it was from the same batch of mixed paint!  We had to paint the sky almost four times to get it right!  Here's hoping we won't face that problem again this year!

Our school nurse has returned!

Our school nurse has finally returned, and today she got to see her mural we painted!  She was very excited and no one blew the surprise to her!  We pulled everyone who worked on it down into her office to do a group photo.  She posted a picture of herself and the mural on her Facebook page and 20 minutes later, one of the big area newspapers contacted her and wanted to put it in their newspaper!  So exciting!

Since I am now addicted to the free software Picassa, I made some photo collages for our school's Facebook page and for the nurse herself.

Here is my art club...minus two students because one doesn't have photo permission and the other didn't come down for the photo.

Finished Bottle Cap Mural: Starry Night! (And what I learned about making a bottle cap mural!)

Well, here it is!  Our bottle cap mural has been finished and mounted!

Is it bad that I look at this, now that it's all finished, and I see some things I would already fix???? Like the fact that the end of the top swirl has a break in the dark blue caps...and that the small end of the bottom swirl looks like it needs some dark blue caps in it?

Friday was staff development at my district and we were all allowed to take the day to basically work on whatever we needed to do, which was GREAT!  A few people had grade level meetings and such, but I was finally able to get my room back in order!  I spent about 30 minutes helping to hang this and getting caps glued back on that fell off in the process.

During the hanging process, these caps fell off the mural and had to be re-glued...Not too bad.  

Now, believe it or not, there are some faculty who DON'T know that this is Starry Night!  I'm going to make a nice sign that gives a little history of VanGogh, as well as how and why we made this, and a poster of Starry Night to display next to it.  I'm also going to make a DO NOT TOUCH sign.  That's the custodian's worse fear...that the kids are going to rub up against it and pick the caps off since it's not behind glass.  The fact that bottle caps fell off only makes them worry more! :-/

Here are the types of caulking I used, and which I found to work the best!
Whenever I do another bottle cap mural, the first caulk with be the one I buy again!

Positive:  Best hold.  I'd give it a 9.5 out of 10.  The custodians had to pry a few pieces off in order to screw it onto the wall...they said the ones glued on with this were really stuck!  Relatively cheap too...bought a 4-pack at Ace Hardware for $10.

Negative:  Dries white.

  

Positive:  It dries clear.  

Negative:  Some of the caps glued on with this fell off.  I'd give it a hold rate of a 7 out of 10.

Positive:  Honestly, can't really think of any!

Negative:  Dries a cloudy white color.  Very poor hold rate.  This was the first one I used because we already had an open bottle of it at home.  A lot of the caps fell off the next day just by running my hands over it!  I'd give it a hold rate of 3 out of 10!

The only other advise I'd give that I learned is how to glue the caps on.  Initially, I was just running a line of caulking on the board and then pressing the caps onto the line.  A lot of those caps fell off.  I found that we had to actually apply a generous amount of caulk to EACH individual cap.  What worked great was having two students work with you.  One would pick up a cap, I'd apply the caulk, and they would replace it while the other student did the same.  Just had to keep reminding them to keep the caps as close together as possible!

Finished Mural! (6 days and then some...)

That's right!  Our mural is finished!  We spent a total of 6 after school days on it, and I spent about three of my free periods as well.  I'm extremely happy with the results!  We finished it this last Wednesday (however I went in the next day to touch up the pink/red fish and paint a top coat of acrylic glaze over the top).  I'm not extremely happy with the red/pink fish, but I knew it was going to come to a point where I would have to release the reins a little, especially since we needed to get it done before the February break...our nurse is supposed to come back to school after the break!

Mural: Day 5

We're almost done! Last Wednesday we didn't work on it because the students were just too high strung, but now we need to get a move on! The nurse comes back after February break!

I went in on one of my free periods to paint the window and finish the ocean plant on the left. All we have left to do is finish the eel and two fish!

I'm not extremely happy with the yellow fish, but at this point I do need to give a little and let the students paint on their own a bit...gotta loosen the reigns some time!

The only other thing on the list to do is to go back in and touch up the blue water in the background...there are some areas that are unpainted and too streaky for my liking!