ST JOSEPH’S SCHOOL MURAL - CREATIVES IN SCHOOLS

Throughout the first half of 2022 I have been working on a special project with a class of intermediate students at St Joseph’s School in Upper Hutt. Over a ten week period we researched, designed and created this amazing 5m long mural to be hung at the entrance of the school. It features many things that are special to these students and who they are as a school. I absolutely loved being part of this project and it forced me to deconstruct my creative process in order to guide these student on their creative journey. Heres a breakdown of what we got up to.

EXPERIMENTING WITH PAINT AND MARK MAKING

In our first session we experimented with painting techniques and mark making using acrylic paints on large paper. We looked at colour mixing and how to create different textures with paint and random objects like sponges and toothbrushes. This was messy, expressive and lots of fun!

MURAL TOUR

We went on a walking mural tour around Upper Hutt where we admired some of the wonderful murals created by talented local artists. We even visited a local artist ‘Chimp’ in his studio and were able to ask him lots of questions about being an artist and creating large scale artwork. He kindly demonstrated how he uses a spray can and showed us some of the pieces he was working on for international and local clients.

RESEARCH

We brainstormed and talked about what makes the school special and how we could represent this visually in our mural. We used the internet to look at some famous New Zealand mural artists and took colour and subject inspiration to use in our own concepts. We created three concepts which we presented to the school via social media and they voted on their favourite. We developed the chosen concept into our final artwork. The final artwork features two students doing a traditional Māori greeting called a hongi, the school kowhaiwhai pattern, the church with cross, a dove featured in the school crest, reference to the Remutaka mountain ranges and the Te Akurangi river as well as two large taniwha from the local legend of Whataitai and Ngake.

Transferring the artwork

We used the doodle grid method to transfer the final artwork onto our large panels in pencil. This took a lot of accuracy and patience as to get all four panels art to line up and look correct.

Painting the mural

We laid our boards out on large tables with drop clothes and started painting. We started by blocking in the large shapes then worked our way to the finer details. With a large group of students we were able to cover a lot of board in a small amount of time. Many of the shapes needEd multiple coats. The finished panels were then given a coat of graffiti stop varnish then installed on the wall near the entrance of the school.