Mural Painting

There was a bit of a lull in January this year, about a week before I was supposed to go back to work, and I realised no one had done any painting at school over the holidays. The P&C have been quite prolific at painting things since 2020, when we started with a tuckshop mural (and then moved on to a garden themed one, the entire prep area and pavers in a garden. This year there was also an ANZAC mural of poppies and a spontaneous bush turkey, but I don't have photos of those.) 

We have a couple of murals that are pre-approved and are really just on the wait list that will get done when people have the time. The school admin also have a wish list of murals that they want done mostly to increase the kids gross motor skills. It was this list that I was looking at when I text my friend Imogen (who usually organises painting things) to ask if she was free to tick some off. 

The fates aligned and Imogen was free, so the two of us went up to school and got to work. We decided that it was time for the senior side of the school to have some love, since we had thus far painted predominantly in the junior half. The mural on the wish list from admin was a city scape with roads that the kids could walk down, give directions with, or drive cars along. 

We cleaned it back and discussed the new mural. Happy with the city scape with all it's learning applications, we began mapping things out, but of course, we didn't want to just paint a boring city with houses and trees. So what was a city, became a rather enormous zoo, complete with oversized animals of every kind, including the mythical. (My justification there is that it gives students the opportunity to use their imaginations, and increase their creativity: learning yo!)

I think between us, Imogen and I spent at least 50 hours painting the mural, and we had other people come and help out too. It's certainly time intensive when you decide to upscale and take the entire area available. When Imogen mentioned that she would label all of the animals (since that's what you'd see at a Zoo), I jumped at the chance to add the Japanese names as well. And when we couldn't find a good inspiration picture for the emu, we pivoted to add a crane. 

The whole mural is difficult to photograph, since it is pretty huge. We talked about adding cool looking insects in the two yellow roundabouts, but when it came to it, we didn't quite get there. Sophie and Rachel, who had been pretty heavily invested in the mural since I dragged them up to school with me while I painted three days out of five, have been vocal in their disappointment. Steve has come to my defence though, given the sheer amount of time I'd already spent at their school painting things. 

For the most part though, the mural is fun perfection. We've given it a protection coat and roped it off to let the paint set before the kids start running all over it. I hope they love it as much as we do.