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.