March Mural Madness

As the month of March comes to a close, I wanted to share some of the murals I’ve worked on recently. I’m a part of the National Art Honor Society (NAHS) at my school and every year our chapter assists a local community service organization by volunteering to paint a mural at a school or community center in need. We usually design the mural ahead of time based on the recipient’s preferences and we’ve often painted mascots and symbols that represent the school.

May 2018

The school we were painting at was actually two schools, an elementary and a middle school right next to each other. For the middle school, we painted the mascot, an astronaut penguin. We added some waves and a sun for some nature elements. The middle school’s mascot was an owl, so we painted that surrounded by words describing the qualities of a model student. The paint we used kept dripping down the wall and running together, which was a bit difficult. There were also a lot of non-artist volunteers (small children) who wanted to help, and though good intentioned, they kept getting in the way. After about two days, the murals were finished. I think they actually turned out great.

Paint mixing!

Initial sketch for the elementary school mural

Design for the middle school mural

Initial sketch for the middle school mural

September 2018

We were invited to come to a chalk festival and work on a piece for a radio station, KKUP 91.5. The festival organizers offered us our own space, so we decided to do a tribute to a student who passed away several years ago. He owned a yellow Volkswagen and liked to go on road trips, so our instructor brings a miniature version of the car with her whenever she goes on trips and takes pictures with it. The reference we used was a picture of the mini Volkswagen atop a rock at a beach along the coast of Oregon.

There were so many talented artists at the festival and I was truly amazed by what other people were doing. Here are some of the highlights:

Ancient ruins

A beach

based on Shel Silverstein’s “Where the Sidewalk Ends”

Abstract shape characters

A bust with sunglasses and a succulent

 

March 2019

Last week we did our annual mural at another middle school. This one was a tribute to a teacher who had been at the school for a very long time and passed away just recently. Her favorite color was purple, so we used a monochromatic color scheme. First, we created a gradient from light to dark purple along the entire wall. This took about 4 hours and we had a limited amount of volunteers because some of the club members never showed up to help.  The light reflecting off the mural was very bright and I had to squint while I was painting in order to see. After finishing the gradient, we started to spray-paint shapes in. The lighthouse in the top corner represents the teacher, watching over the kids as they learn and play.

The design

Working on the gradient

Starting to spray-paint

the finished mural

 

These murals were fun to paint, but a lot of work. I was pretty exhausted after we finished up last week. I hope you enjoyed these pictures. Next week I may be doing a live painting in an art contest, so I might post pictures of that. I’ve also completed at least four art projects for my classes, so I will probably post a quick recap of what I’ve been doing over the winter and spring sometime soon. Thanks for reading!