Monday, January 13, 2020

The brand new Manual for Making Murals!!!

My trip to Guatemala is coming closer and I'm very excited about the two projects on my agenda! One is painting a mural in the two dorms of a brand new clinic for children with cleft lip and palate, currently under construction, by Tess Unlimited. This project is sponsored by the Dutch foundation Colour 4 Kids.

The other project is a mural with the students (age 9-17) of Alotenango´s municipal art course. I'll be teaching the kids over the course of two weeks about the history of muralism, how to create one from scratch, how to pick a theme etc. This project is generously sponsored by Dr. Jim Bader.

While I was working on my lesson plans, the worksheets were getting more and more elaborate and I figured it would be pretty cool to actually turn them into a a real book. And so the Manual for Making Murals was born!

It's 43 pages long and includes:
  • A short history of muralism through the centuries (prehistoric art, ancient Maya culture, Roman murals, medieval art, Renaissance, Mexican muralism, street art and graffiti)
  • Colour (colour theory, colour psychology)
  • Why painting community murals (impact, audience, how to get involved)
  • Picking a theme (exercise to collaboratively pick a theme)
  • Making a design (composition, background, symbolism, scale, enlarging through grid)
  • Preparing the work (prepping the wall, getting materials ready, how to take care of equipment)
  • Painting the mural (how to divide the work, mix paints, cleanup)
  • The aftermath... (inauguration, press release, credits, thanks, report etc.)

The manual is written in Spanish and include a lot of activities for kids to do. The graphic design is in black and white, to make reproduction cheap and easy. (The coloured cover is optional). Right now I'm the process of finishing editing (many thanks to Neyla González for her corrections) and then the mural is ready for print! The students in Alotenango will of course each receive a copy, thanks to the Colour 4 Kids Foundation.

For the near future, the idea is to offer the manual in PDF format to whomever plans to create a community mural, in exchange for a $25 donation towards MuralArte's projects.

Soon more news on these upcoming projects!!!