My Last School Mural.... (For Awhile)

Hello Readers! I am now writing you from Portland, Oregon! It's my 3rd day living in the city and so far, I am happy and excited about what's going on up here. I moved only 2 hours away (I was living in Eugene), so everything still feels like home...ish. It's still rainy Oregon, and I have been taking trips up to Portland since I was little, so there's a lot that's very familiar. I also have many friends in town, so once I start seeing everyone, I think this will start to feel even more like home. It's by far, the easiest move I've ever made. But it's also different in another way: it's permanent for the foreseeable future. I've moved to Laguna Beach and Oakland, CA., Philadelphia, PA., and 2 different rural villages in Madagascar. All of which, I moved to without knowing anyone, or much about the place at all. Those moves were some big adjustments, but they always had an end-date... they were temporary. 

Anyway, here I am in the city now, starting this new part of my life. I'm working half-time as a Graphic Designer for Portland Jewish Academy. So far, it's been great. I like the Marketing team that I'm working with - everyone else has been really nice, too. I'm getting to design fliers and things already, it's fun! In the rest of the time, I'm going to be working on getting my mural business going. I'm looking forward to that part a lot. But I did leave a pretty cool job back home. I will really miss being an Artist in Residence in the schools. I do hope to get on a Teaching Artist's roster here though, so that I can continue teaching kids. It's so much fun. Here was my last project with an after school program in Springfield. The school is called Two Rivers Dos Rios, and their mascot is the otter. Hence, the two rivers and otter imagery. Only snapped a couple of pics of this in progress, but I'll be posting more once I get shots of the final installed piece. The kids did great on this! It was a nice wrap-up to my time teaching in Eugene. 

Spring Bird Drawing Collage

Lately I've been teaching a residency at Dos Rios Two Rivers Elementary in Springfield.  We've been making some art for the kids to keep, and some to sell at the upcoming art walk (they're having a section for local schools to sell kid art to fundraise).  This is our last project, and I must say, they are turning out super cute!  I made these with Kinder through 5th graders, and adjusted for complexity, depending on grade level.  Read on to see how we made them!

Step #1: Lead a step-by-step drawing of a bird.  Start with pencil, trace with thick sharpie.  We actually had both the thick and thin sharpies available, so for the older kids, I had them outline in thick, and trace all the inside lines with the thinest sharpie. This looks really cool....see below.  

I had the littler kids draw birds like the above, and the older kids draw the more complicated tropical birds like you see below. With a couple of the classes, we opted for drawing chameleons instead of birds, which the kids really got into. Need to take some pictures of those....

Step #2:  Next, have the kids color these in with soft chalk pastels.  I told them no black brown, or the super dark blue (these covered up the sharpie lines, whereas the brighter, lighter colors don't).  Show them how they can blend them, and how the sharpie lines show up again when they do.  

..... No need to stay in the lines since they will be cutting them out anyways.

DAY 2: We did this next step the next day. We needed 2, 45 minute sessions to get through the whole project. The next step is to make some leaves and branches, cut out the birds, and paste it all together!!