Mural Time!

This semester for my Illustration: Persuasion & Propaganda class, we made a mural! You may recall the last mural called "Get Out the Vote" right before the pandemic. Back then, we were addressing an upcoming election. This time, we're dealing with a lot of post-pandemic burn-out, so we decided to go with a Mental Wellness and Selfcare theme for the semester - hence, this year's design.
     There was a lot of prep work that went into this. Students had to decide on a theme (within our theme), a color palette, the image itself, representation, application, etc. That took almost a month to get sorted. Happily, our local paint shop PPG donated the paint and supplies. Once we settled on the design, I had the line art printed onto oversized paper at the UPS store. Then it was a matter of using transfer paper to trace the design onto the mural surface...


It was tight working conditions, but the students worked together brilliantly. In fact, I was surprised at how easily they reached consensus on all the choices they had to make during the planning stages. I suppose it was only natural that would carry over to the actual implementation.
     Painting the mural took several class times (studio classes run 2 hours and 45 minutes each), but the students were diligent.




And the outcome was SPECTACULAR! Check it out! (Click the mural to open it larger in a new window.)
     I was so proud of my students; but better yet, they were proud of themselves and learned a ton! What a lucky teacher I am!