What to do?

Well yay we are finished! It's a bitter sweet feeling. I know that a lot of people are happy that we finished but now there is a feeling of having nothing to do. We can't plan our unveiling yet because our panel member isn't in town right now. I am really happy that we finished but I do feel as if now what to do?

We have been suggested by Ray Griffin, our director, to paint another mural in our school gym's entry way... Yes, it would be very exciting to paint another mural, but it totally defeats the purpose of Painting Smiles. What do you think?

The whole point of Painting Smiles was to make disadvantaged, young children smile with our mural. Yes, we do have disadvantaged children at Chinquapin, but at least for me I had more in mind children with diseases or children who are growing up in tough neighborhoods. I honestly wanted to reach out outside of Chinquapin.

Newspaper #2 is out!

So this morning I took Susan's advice in googleing myself and finding a copy of the second newspaper which we were to come out in. It worked! Our first newspaper came out on Thursday (http://www.matagordaadvocate.com/). The second newspaper came out this morning (http://baycitytribune.com/news/article_753377e2-3bc1-11e0-95d9-001cc4c002e0.html).

It has been really interesting to read our story on a newspaper. It's been a lot of fun and an unforgettable experience.

FIN! We are DONE!

The mural is complete! We have finished our mural at the Boys and Girls Club in Bay City. The best part is that everyone who has seen it has really liked it. The next thing that we will need to plan is the unveiling that will take place in late April, early May. I really can't wait until everyone gets to see it.

This week in Bay City was a lot of fun and a lot of hard work. We had to finish painting everything! The most difficult part with the painting was the children. Since they were smaller and didn't have very many straight edges it was a little more difficult to fill them in.

Meeting with the kids was a lot of fun. We had them point at us and say, "Look there go the painters!" Some of them would call us the "artists". Our first encounter with the kids, we had two little boys run away screaming, "Girls! Girls!" All of our encounters with the kids were a lot of fun. We got a chance to use their new art room for the first time. We had them do their stars which they all decorated in many different ways.

The most awesome part of the week is that we got two interviews with two different papers. We got our first interview published in Thursday's paper (http://www.matagordaadvocate.com/news/2011/feb/17/painting-smiles-art-project-inspires-high-school-s/?news). We will have our second interview published in this coming Sunday's paper.

The project of Painting Smiles was a lot of fun and very rewarding. It's sad to have to say that its over for now. We do hope to paint more murals in the future. I hope that this was only the beginning of a new path and hobby. We will continue to make plans concerning to our unveiling and hopefully future projects.

I Hate Blue Tape!

We have visited Bay City for the third time this month already.

Our first time we went to visit and see the wall. It was nice to see it in real life and imagine the mural. The second time we went to visit we actually began to sketch out the mural. We had a few technical difficulties. Our third time we finished taping the outlines on the wall and began to paint!

The fact that we decided to get water based paint instead of oil based (http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/44106/home_painting_tips_waterbased_or_oilbased.html) is making things go by a lot faster. The oil paint is a lot stronger and takes at least 24 hours before it completely dries. Water based paint only takes about 30 minutes to dry.

We are sure that we will finish the mural by Thursday! At first there were many people who doubted that we would actually accomplish our goal, but I'm sure that we can do it! We can't wait to meet the children and spend time with them. It's exciting to have the project day here already! I can't wait to see the end result!

Mural Sketches

These are our two mural sketches. Feel free to tell us which one you like the best or what you like from either one of them. We already have our final sketch and have already traced it on the wall. We actually do not want anyone (other than Janet Peden, who lives in Bay City, and the members of The Boy's and Girl's Club) to see the mural before our final presentation. We believe that it will be a lot more impacting to see the final mural on the wall versus seeing it in a picture.

Yesterday when we visited Bay City we traced all of the figures and began to taping the inside of them. The taping is so that when we paint the background we won't get any paint on the other figures. When we began to trace it was difficult to see the figure since the projector wasn't well focused. Then we had technical difficulties, which was one of the worst things ever! The figures wouldn't appear on the wall! Thanks to Elber Reyes, which we had to call for help, we were able to fix the problem. Taping had to be by far the hardest and most annoying thing to do. Since a lot of the figures are rounded off we had to also round the tape. We were very lucky to get help from my mom, sister, and Janet Peden.

We plan to go to Bay City again this coming up Sunday. We will begin to paint the mural completely and hope to finish by Thursday. We will be back on campus by Friday, February 18 in order to give a few sneak peaks of our mural... but not the complete thing until our presentation in May.

Bay City Here We Come!

Tomorrow we will be visiting The Boy's and Girl's Club for the first time! Mr. Deleon has agreed to take us and give us some tips of things that we will have to do once we are on our own. Sadly we probably won't get a chance to see the children since we will have to leave before they get there.

Personal feelings... I'm pretty excited. I really want to see the wall up close to get my head in the game and know what we will have to face. I'm actually sort of nervous too because our project is finally here! Well... it is all mixed feelings. I'm excited to get started, but nervous because there is no messing up when it comes to a mural.

I can't wait until they see our sketches. So far everyone who has seen them seems to be very excited. We'll see how everything comes out!