progress on the mural in walton

mindy and i spent our sunday in the town of walton, in.  we met up with a group of students from the local high school and their art teacher, and we set to work on a new mural.  The piece is not yet finished and it is not yet titled.  it is mostly done, i just have to fill in by writing the title (when we decide on one) across the top of the building and by cleaning up edges and maybe adding in a few other "fill in" images and details.

I met with this group of students 3 times, and through those meetings i developed a group of sketches for them to choose from.  There were a few different variations of similar ideas, and a few totally off the wall thoughts.  The last time we met, we chose our final image, a narrative of a child building with blocks that feature elements of their community.  i gave the kids 2 weeks to cut their stencils.  They each had at least one image to cut.  then we met up yesterday to paint.

mindy and i got up at 6am, um, 6:40-ish-am, wiped the sleep from our eyes and made our way an hour down state highways and county roads to the town of walton.  it was cold and spots of frost and fog covered the low-lying areas in the sunrise along the way.  we arrived, jumped out into the wet grass and unloaded the paint and ladder, mindy set up the camera and i started sketching.  students began to arrive around 9am and i quickly put them to work filling in the images with primer.  the primer dried rather quickly in the morning sunshine that was getting increasingly hotter.  so we got our color coat done before we broke for lunch.  with a vast majority of the work complete, we paused for pizza.  then began laying down the stencils.  we came to a stopping point around 3ish.  Then we discussed where we could go with it.

we talked about writing the title across the top of the building to fill in a space that seemed a bit blank.  so i told them to come up with a title and send it to me and i would write it.  i also need to clean up some of the corners and spaces of the blocks.  i think there are a few places on the blocks that feel a bit blank, so i am going to fill in some of those spaces as well.