In process with the MLK community mural 2011

Here are a few notes about the process we undertook in creating the mural at the community center.

First, after talking to Luis at Chicago Hopes, we decided the mural should be about the Illinois prairie. Since we didn't have the option to work with the students to develop their own imagery, we chose the prairie because it has a geographical connection to the students and because animals are always well loved.

We began by getting books from the library about animals and flowers of the prairie, and Derek, Kayla and I drew contour line drawings of animals and plants based on the books. We could have traced but we went for free-hand drawing for originality and pizazz.

Next we used the wonderful copy machine to play with the scale of our original drawings and create the effect of abundance.

In looking at pictures of the space, there were two walls which seemed optimal to paint on, so we created one large and one smaller mural composition. We copied and pasted our drawings together into two basic but large compositions which were "drawn" to scale to the best of our knowledge.

 

 Next, I made a visit to our friend Kinkos and turned these compositions into transparencies. 

We borrowed overhead projectors from Columbia College 

proving once again that they aren't obsolete technology!

Here we are projecting the mural design onto one of the walls. Once the images were projected and in the right spot on the wall, the older kids and the Columbia College students traced over all the lines using a neutral color of paint and brushes. The young woman on the left in the bottom photo kept exclaiming OMG OMG! as the magic of transforming a tiny drawing into a large mural began to unfold.

Here are images which show what the walls looked like before we got started.
Before and afters are always nice! America loves makeovers and so do we.