Trojans: Mural Finished

Here is the final image. The mural was presented to the school during the graduation ceremony. I heard there was an unavailing. Alas, I was not there. I was on vacation a little early.

Trojans: Colors Applied

The book I've referred to for this project is The Mural Book: A Practical Guide for Educators by Janet Braun-Reinitz and Rochelle Shicoff. The authors recommend using Golden Paints. When I found out that Golden acrylics cost about $25 for an 8 oz. tube I nearly passed a stone. Thank God there was a more affordable option for me at Michael's. I ended up getting Liquitex's students-grade Basics acrylics. They were very creamy and covered a large area. I ended up buying double of what I actually needed. I'd recommend them to anyone. Especially, since they were only $8.99 for an 8 oz. tube. Here's one of the seniors up on the ladder.

So far so good. Next, the kids outline the entire image with black.

Trojans: Traced

I printed a grayscale version of the final image on a transparency sheet and put it on a transparency projector and blew it up on the gymnasium wall. In an earlier experiment I found that using pencils to draw on this type of masonry is not efficient. I needed to sharpen the pencil every 10 seconds. So I thought charcoal sticks or oil pastels might be too messy. It was then I happened to have discovered Korn's Lithographic Crayons hidden in one of my cabinets. They look like they could be 100 years old. Who knows how long they were in there.I had the students trace the projected image with the crayons and it went pretty well.

Trojans: Wall Primed

The area of the gymnasium wall on which the mural will be has been successfully primed thanks to the work of my students. Students and faculty who aren't in the know have been making fun guesses and questions due to the irregular shape of the image. Some have guessed correctly about the spear and arm.

Trojans In Color

As you can see I hacked out some colors in Photoshop to nail down what the final colors will look like.

Trojans In Black & White

Here is the final black and white design. I've never done a mural before and I had no idea where to start so I did an online search for school murals and came across some really great artwork. I cannot take too much credit, though. I did steal some design elements that I thought were amazing from another muralist. I took his sunburst circle background and the ribbon/banner in the front.

Trojans!

I fixed a couple of things and inked these Trojans.

Trojan Warrior Woman

The mural project must include a lady Trojan. So I had to research what a Trojan warrior woman looked like. I found some very interesting cos-players, strange video game designs and some interesting revealing anime characters. I then started researching the goddess of war, Athena, Pallas Athena, and Minerva. That's when I hit reference gold. I sketched three poses and was finally satisfied with the fourth.

Trojan Warrior

My school's senior class wanted to gift the school a mural in the gymnasium. They approached me to help them. There are a couple of problems. First of all it's the end of May and they've just asked me to help. Secondly, I would have to design it because their design isn't fully realized and there's no time to help them flesh it out. Lastly, it's their gift to the school. I'm not doing it for them. I finally decided today that it's too late in the year for them to complete this mural. However, as I started to sketch out my ideas I started getting into it. I may save this as a project for a future class. This first sketch was easy for me. It's a manly Trojan. It's a pretty classic pose. No biggie.

Birthday Girl

Today is my wife's birthday so I thought I'd draw a little portrait of her. The image is taken from one of my favorite photographs of her. Happy Birthday, sweetie!

2011 Grads

This year our school's yearbook adviser made advertising space available to staff. So I bought a space. Above is my ad. featuring caricatures of our school's graduates.

Rick Geary On An Envelope

I love the work of Rick Geary and I also love Recorded Books. I doodled this little homage/plagiarism of Rick Geary's logo for Recorded Books on the back of an envelope I sent to Recorded Books.

Chicken La Maison

"What's for dinner tonight?"
I'll tell you what's for dinner. I made Chicken La Maison for me and the wife. I got the inspiration from the great Stuart Immonen and the recipe from here. Try it. You'll like it. It's as good as it looks.