Mural Project. New Haven, CT

This was the second Mural project that Will (who organized absolutely everything.),  Justin, and myself painted with a local High School in New Haven CT.  This year the idea was to do something that the students could paint (with spraypaint) by themselves from the initial sketch to finishing details.  

 With that in mind I drew up a grid that represented a section of one of the school's walls.  From there, we asked the students to draw basic shapes using the grid and to choose color harmonies based on a primary/secondary color wheel to fill-in each shape.  (Read: we just wanted to make a really colorful mural that the students would have fun painting.) 

 The mural painting took place after the school day ended so the students who were working on the project were there because they wanted to be a part of the project rather than being there as part of their curriculum. 

 After the first day we had a general idea of how the painting would look and what the students abilities were.  Some of the students who returned from last year were able to outline and highlight.  Others were just getting used to using spray paint and still working on can control so they were focusing on filling in, cutting back, and blending.

 The second day the students finished the majority of the drawing and were ready to paint.

 We wanted the mural to use the same visual vocabulary that you would see used in Piecing so we treated each shape as if it were a letter.  The second day we took some of the students who returned from last year and began to add these details so that the newer students could get an idea of how the finished piece would look.

 This day was the most rewarding.  At one point there were about 7 students all drawing and filling in shapes on their own, helping each other make decisions about how and what to do next.

 For the next couple days the students were on, I guess, what you'd call a free lunch schedule.  Meaning they had half days with absolutely no classes.  For us this meant that different students would be rotating through depending on who came to school that day.  This allowed us to work one on one with them to finish detailing shapes and at the end of days we put in a little extra time finishing some parts ourselves to make sure we could get it done on time.   

 By the fourth day or so half of the mural was complete.

 detail.

detail 

And here is a low quality photo of the finished mural.  I hope to have better pictures to share soon.  Thanks to students at HSC, Will, and Justin.  Let's do it again soon!