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!

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.

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!

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.

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.

Proposal

Culminating Senior Project Proposal

I would simply like to make people happy. Yes, very broad idea but mainly make children happy. I would like to work with Brenda to make a mural in a children's center to help children forget about their problem for at least one second. We are working together because we have both seen that working together during our mural painting of our gym we have found a passion of painting. I would specifically like to help out children with cancer, or any sort of special needs.

One of our options is painting a children's center such as CPS (Contact: my sister works at a psychology office so she talks to them fairly frequently and could give us numbers to different locations), Make A Wish Foundation (Contact: look for different locations and talk to them personally), or even Texas Children's Hospital (Contact: we would try to personally contact the President and Chief Executive Officer, Marc A. Wallace).

With painting a mural there are some issues. The first issue is if the locations will allow us to paint a mural. The second issue is time. We will need to know what days we will be going to the location and by when we want to finish it. The third issue is the conservation of the mural. The fourth issue has to do with the paint. For example if we paint inside of a hospital, some of the paint could be toxic and could harm the children.

Our idea for the mural really depends on where and for who the mural will be done. According to parents.com, children feel happy when their voice is heard and they are able to express themselves. So for the mural I would like to meet the children and want to know what they want to express and even have them help out. Once we know what we and the children want the mural to look like we will begin to paint smiles!