Mural

"Arrrgh! This always happens to me. The mural gets started and I forget to take pictures," I told my 3rd hour students before fetching my camera from my bag of supplies. Yesterday my EPS (elite painting squadron) and I painted a mural in the cramped hallway between the high school's main office and the guidance office.

A few months ago, my principal Phil Morrison came to me with the idea of painting a surprise mural for Tim Gateley, assistant principal at Unity. His office has windows that face this hallway, and he had decorated the walls with some motivational posters that the guidance people quickly stole. Tim is a serious deer hunter, and Phil thought it would be fun if my students and I painted some kind of nature scene featuring a deer that Tim could look at from his office. So yesterday that's just what we did.

Only four students and I were able to move semi-comfortably in the space at any given time, so I chose my strongest painters to work on it. New painters came in every 45 minutes, and we tried to tackle the project logically, working from back to front.

The mural is about six feet tall and eight and a half feet wide. We measured and masked it off during first hour, and by the time second hour was over, we had applied a couple of coats of paint to the sky and background. Then the three students above, terrific painters all, filled the bottom fourth of the painting with scrubby, harvested-corn textures. Each student had a unique way of making these textures happen, and I rotated them throughout the period to unify the section.

The seniors above are among the biggest painting guns in my art student arsenal. They're not just guns--they're Howitzers. They're TANKS. These are the students I trusted to start painting the deer and the trees.

Usually I shoot mural images onto walls using a projector, but since Mr. Gateley's office was in the way, we weren't able to do that. So earlier in the week I drew a cartoon of the deer. This is an old school way to put a mural together. Renaissance artists such as Michelangelo drew plans for their large frescoes on paper first, and these were called cartoons. They perforated the lines in the cartoons, attached them to the walls, and rubbed charcoal over the holes, resulting in an easy, connect-the-dots transfer.

Since the deer was relatively uncomplicated, I cut it out and had my students trace around the main shape, sans perforation. We put a piece of graphite paper behind the head. Graphite paper is basically tissue paper with graphite on one side, and it helped us transfer the face details onto the wall. Then the two aces above painted the deer with a flat beige-y gray (or greige). While the kids were eating, I quickly painted the face and most of the fur.

Suddenly the mural was really starting to happen. All afternoon we painted a network of trees in the foreground. Each fresh group of students came in, saw what we were doing, and announced, "I'M SCARED." After about five minutes of being scared, they got into it. After about five minutes of getting into it, they became addicted, and so did I.

"It's like, I paint a line, and I could maybe stop and take a little break, but no, I've gotta paint another line," I said, and the students agreed. Painting happy little trees over the deer was really satisfying. I told them, "I feel like I'm Bob Ross, and he's just painted a mountain or something, and then he goes over it with a big black line and you think he's ruined the picture. But then he turns it into a branch!"

Everybody worked so well together and had fun. They moaned when it was time to quit for the hour. It was just an all-around great experience and a good way to reward my most dedicated students, who will eventually sign the mural and feel a sense of accomplishment every time they visit the office.

By the end of the day, the mural was about 90% finished, which was good, and everyone in the office was impressed with the speed and quality of our painting. I plan to finish it Monday after school with anyone who wants to pitch in. (And I just noticed this: the fluorescent light above the deer works well with the light on its back.)

I always dread painting murals, but by the end of the project I ask myself, Why am I not painting murals every week?