Our video of our whole project

Here is the video to our whole project and our process.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HE43eJ3B0u0

Last and Final

This is probably my last blog since we are officially done with the project! We have had our unveiling and it was an amazing success! I was very happy that people made the effort to go all the way out to Bay City to see our mural. I think that everyone was happy with the results.

Its a bitter sweet feeling to finish the project. It's sad that it has come to an end but very relieving that we are done. We honestly hope that this isn't the end of our project. I hope that it is only the beginning of a new life long project. It has been so much fun and an unforgettable experience. Painting Smiles was amazing!

Unveiling!

We have a date for our unveiling! It will be held at the Boys and Girls Club in Bay City on Friday April 8 at 4:00. I am very excited for everyone to finally see our mural! I hope that as many people as possible from the class can go, if not we defendantly want to invite some juniors so they can begin to get an idea of what they will have to do next year.

I'm pretty sure that we do not have enough time to do a second mural. It takes a lot of planning before you can actually begin to paint. Since we do have left over paints, we do hope that we could possibly paint a second mural at the Boys and Girls Club, but that will all depend on the staff and board members.

I'm very excited to finally show off the mural! :D

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!

It's Almost Time

Progress has been great! We are going to go to the Boys and Girl's Club next week to go see the wall and present our idea. Our mural is going to be sort of like a day to night transition. I have drawn out the day part while Brenda has been drawing the night part.

In our mural we are going to use lots of colors. Its been difficult to color in our draft with exact colors since crayola doesn't offer a wide variety of colors. The colors will vary. We have a long list of things that we need from Home Depot or Lowes. I'm sure we're going to be very astonished with all of the color options that we are going to have.

We are very excited to go paint at Bay City. We will be painting during Creativity Week (February 15-18). The date is coming closer and closer!

So Much to do, So Little Time

Things have been going so fast and we hope to have a design very soon. Brenda and I will start the design because we will need the approval before we begin to paint.
We will begin to paint in February and we hope to finish in one week. We are excited to go to Bay City and we hope to be able to also interact with the children by either teaching a class or even just playing with them.
There are a lot of things to do before February but we are very excited to begin to paint some smiles.

Who Knew Fun would be so Hard?

I hope everyone's holiday break has been going great! I've been using most of my time resting and now that its close to go back to school I have realized that it is now time to get my head back into the game. 1 semester left!

Since Brenda is on her trip to El Salvador we haven't been able to talk about what the actual mural is going to look like. But I have been researching activities that we can do with the children while we are there. For sure while we are painting the mural we want the children to be involved in the making of the mural. We were also thinking of having a chalk area on the mural where they could always paint and keep there drawings on the wall.

I have been looking up different art projects on (http://www.michaels.com/). But while I was looking at some of the crafts they didn't seem interesting, or inspiring, and not mural related at all.

I've been thinking of fun projects that I've had to do in the past in my art classes. Does anyone have any art project suggestions that have really been fun or inspired them in the past?

Hopes for the Future

Over the course of the year “Painting Smiles” has taught me to do what makes me happy, and when shared with others my happiness could be passed on.

Panel Searching

Finding the location for the mural to be painted was probably the most tedious part of the project. It was difficult and we weren’t able to get to the main purpose of the project: to make children happy.

In our panel we have had a few people in mind. We would like to invite Mr. Bicente Deleon, Janet Peden, Sarah Callahan Baker, David LaVassaur, and Emanuel Martinez.

· Mr. Bicente Deleon has been the one who has taught us almost all the things we know about painting murals. He was there with us throughout the whole process of painting the whole gym. He could help us by giving us guide lines and tips upon improving with our mural.

· Ms. Janet Peden is the one who has been gracious enough to help us out with finding the location. We hope that she can help us with giving us tips and ideas of how the mural should look.

· Ms. Sarah Callahan Baker has been very supportive of the project. She has children of her own and she could help us with giving us ideas of what children would like.

· David LaVassaur is the director of the Boy’s and Girl’s Center which we will be painting. He could help us by giving us suggestions of what he believes that the students, parents, and staff would most.

· Emanuel Martinez is a professional muralist. We hope to get tips from him and use them in our own mural.

We are very excited for our painting of the mural. We hope that we get positive answers from our panel invitations.

But so far our individual research has been going well. The most difficult part is going to be to decide what to paint. It is difficult because we still need to find out what the children want painted. One of the major challenges that we are going to need to face is the texture of the wall. We have heard that the wall has a rough finish so making a very detailed mural will not work out.

Research that we need is not only what we are going to paint but what we want to teach the children. We have been offered the great opportunity to be able to teach a class while we are at the Boy’s and Girl’s Center. We need to research what we want the children to learn and what we want them to get out of the experience. During the break we will need to do more research and reading in how the art that we teach the children could influence and inspire them.

Mission Accomplished!

The mission has been accomplished! We have found a location to where we are going to paint the mural and we have found someone to sponsor us.

A family friend helped us with finding the location. She knows of a Girls and Boys Club that was just built in Bay-city, Texas. The club has been very excited about our project and can't wait to work with us. They already have a wall where they want us to paint the mural. Brenda and I will soon go to Bay-city to talk to the director of the club and see what we want in the mural.

The best part is that we have gotten a sponsor to pay for all of our supplies. Business company, Bowen, Miclette, & Britt (http://www.bmbinc.com/) has been very generous to us by offering to pay for everything.

We are very excited to have a place to paint and we can't wait to get started. Thank you so much to all of those who have been helping us find

Contacts Contacts Contacts!

Things have been going a lot better!
Knowing what we are actually going to paint will not be decided until we know where we are going to paint, and what the children want to see in this mural that will be theirs.
Finding the location, the most difficult part, is progressing! I have still been in contact with the Make a Wish Foundation from the gulf (http://texgulf.wish.org/) and they have been very kind in giving us suggestions on where we could paint. They directed me to contacting Texas Children's Hospital (http://www.texaschildrens.org/) and to MD Anderson (http://www.mdanderson.org/).
Even though MD Anderson sadly had to reject our project because we weren't allowed to paint in their hospitals, Texas Children's Hospital sounds very excited! They have contacted me already the same day that I called them. They seem to be very excited in hearing more about our project and hopefully we can get something started!

One Step Closer

I have talked to the Make a Wish Foundation (http://www.wish.org) and they have been very interested in helping us on our project. They have given us a few ideas of ways that we could help them out. Ways that we could help out is by remodeling children's rooms. We could paint a mural in children's individual rooms in their homes. For example there is a little girl from Channelview, Texas who wants a Paris themed room, and a little boy who wants a soccer themed room. We hope that we can find a project where we can paint the mural and at the same time make children smile.

Make A Wish, May make our Wish

Brenda has been doing an awesome job in researching the different colors and the emotions that each color gives. Finding the colors that gives positive energy will be a very important factor in our mural.
I have contacted the "Make A Wish Foundation" and left a message. They have been kind enough to call back and are excited to hear more about the project! We hope to talk to them very soon again to see with what they are able to contribute to the project.

Learning with Art

I found this Ted talk very interesting because he is trying to help children by tutoring them one on one, and in front of his center there is a huge mural. For our project we want to also help children but with our art. Our art may not be showing how to do a math problem, but expressing our words through a paintbrush.

So Far, So... Okay

Finding a location for the mural to be painted has still been a struggle. There are a lot of places and the issue of the chemicals in the paint with the children always comes up.

The good news is that we have talked to Mr. Deleon, the school maintenance man, who is more than happy to help us paint the mural and give us feedback on our work. This will be very interesting because he is probably one of our toughest judges!