Monday, April 9, 2012

Montessori Map Mural Day one

Today I started a large project-  painting murals with the students at Montessori school in Duxbury. Julie Hawkins, artist,visionary, friend and amazing art teacher at the school ,invited me to be an artist in residence and paint murals of the whole world over the next three years in a foyer of the school. Big project-  fun! So today with my awesome intern (also Julie) we projected the map of North America on the wall with an overhead projector  and outlined it in dark painted lines. Julie the teacher had the kids draw images prior so we had a lot of them to place around the map. The overhead worked great for some things but we had to use carbon paper for other things... no problem!  The kids also drew fish and mermaids and animals. It will keep being  painted all week... I don't really know how it will look- but I have a sort of master plan. This was the first step.
-trying to size the image- keeping in mind that Europe will have to go on the other side of the wall...getting the hang of the overhead projector too...
First group adding their stuff- they are awesome kids.
Tomorrow we start with color. I found these new paints at Lowes today and am so excited- they are thick and bright - $9.99 a qt- but what I love the most are the clear containers! They are Pantone inspired paint called "My Color" 
I was also very inspired by a website my interior designer daughter Markie turned me onto called Adobe Kuler- I have this hope that the mural colors will all have harmony.  Check it out its a great website for creating color pallettes.
I mixed up some colors in  containers (containers really make a difference- these puppies are 10 for a dollar  from the dollar tree and have snap on lids)
Tomorrow we start filling in and adding more stuff.
Stay tuned!