animals – Giants & Pilgrims

I actually finished this mural at the end of last month, but I didn’t want to miss out on sharing some of the behind the scenes process pictures here. And actually, this morning I went and put the finishing piece on – the Middle C note right in the middle of the musical staff and finally signed the wall, so I suppose it wasn’t actually complete until today. This is the second large scale mural of I have painted for the city of Greeley – here is a picture of the first –

Doing these pieces as silhouette worlds has been so enjoyable. (By the way, that is baby Beatrice in my tummy.)

My newest mural and mountains wallpapers is part of the City of Greeley’s Art in Public places alleyway project. City officials hope to see the alley — which serves as a connection between walkways from the 8th and 9th street plazas — covered with music themed artwork. Their plan is to take an eye-sore and turn it into a public gallery of sorts. Isn’t that a lovely idea?
You can read more about the city of Greeley’s plans for the alleyway and the scope of the project here.

Here is the my alley way Wall BEFORE:
Dealing with those pipes and utility boxes was the biggest challenge…

And in progress pictures (scroll all the way through to see the finished wall)

And FINISHED! (This is a composite photo, the narrowness of the alley makes it tricky to get the whole wall in one photo)

For this entire year I’ve been doing an at home curriculum with the family (Lucy 6, Hattie 3, Beatrice 10 months). Tim and I call the project “Abacus” and we’re sharing it each month for the fun, challenge, and community of it. Each month we choose a theme and then come up with a bunch of activities around that theme.
Read all about how to use this list and our heart behind this project here.
Explore past months themes here.

Growing up we had this book as a kid by Graeme Base called Animalia. It’s the basic idea of an ABC book taken to the next level – as many things that start with a letter as possible entertwined together on one page with catchy alliteration poetry. My dad and I would play a game where we would see how many things we could find that started with the letter on each page. It would be in the hundreds per page. Inspired by that book, this month’s theme is “ANIMALIA” – think the animal kingdom, animal alphabets, zoology, fables and more

September Dates to Take Note of:

September 7th –Labor Day
September 13th –Grandparents Day
September 19th –Talk Like a Pirate Day
September 21st – International Peace Day
(We also have two little cuties who have September birthdays)

Local: Greeley, CO events:

September 12th –Chalk-a-Lot at UNC (a fun family art event – they will be trying to break the world record for longest continuous chalk drawing)
September 12th –Potato Day at Centennial Village (one of my favorites)
September 19th – Poudre River Trail-a-Thon – we haven’t ever been to this, but it sounds great!

List of Ideas and Inspiration for ANIMALIA:

FILMS:

There are so many good family movie nights here…

Dr. Doolittle (I prefer the old one of course)

Milo and Otis
We Bought a Zoo
Babe
Homeward Bound (Old version is called the Incredible Journey)
Gorillas in the Mist

BOOKS:

Animalia by Graeme Base
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Animalium by Katie Scott & Jenny Broom

All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot

…and oh so many other great books from the perspective of animals (Redwall, Wildwood, Charlottes Web, etc…)

SCIENCE & NATURE:

Learn about animal taxonomy (remember “Kings Play Cards On Fat Green Stools”?)

Animal tracks – maybe make plaster casts of them

Learn about endangered and extinct animals – could make little clay models of them

ART:

Funny animal combinations

Painting and drawing animals – there are some great books on this. Learning how to simplify to basic shapes is a great lesson.