Thursday, June 13, 2013

Gluing Down the Caps


The Next Step:
Gluing Down the Caps


Above is a photo of the first board
that had all of its caps glued down. 

This was so fun to see! 

The students loved seeing their work displayed
on the window sills of the art room.

At this stage, they were really starting to 
take pride in their work and in the 
project, in general. 


Above is a photo of two boards matching up. 
Again, the students loved seeing the mural 
starting to come together, one step at a time.

Gluing down the caps provided an opportunity to 

teach about some of the elements and principles of design.

I stressed to my students that in order for the mural to look
more visually interesting, they needed to choose caps 
of different sizes for any given area. 

This way, the caps would create a simulated look of texture

I told my students that if they chose one size of caps for an area, 
that this would look boring. I said to them, "Choose a variety of sizes
so that the mural looks more interesting!" 

They did a great job with this! 


Below is a photo of the mural (work-in-progress)
that was on display for the school's Art Show. 


You can see here how four of the foam core pieces were 
placed together on a larger board.

We used particle board from Home Depot for the larger boards. 
The corner caps were screwed down to the wood
in this photo, just to keep it together. 

Later, all of the caps would be screwed down (next post). 

We were very lucky in that Home Depot donated two large 
pieces of particle board (4' x 8'), 1/2" thick. 
These are priced at $20.00 a piece! 

Home Depot cut the boards down to the size you see above. 
We ended up with six boards cut to this size.

Note that the spiral on the right 
has different shades of blue. Arg!! 

This would be remedied later
to create a sense of unity for the main spiral.

I explained to my students that the main spiral is the central
point of Van Gogh's painting, the emphasis
Thus, it is important that this part of the mural be consistent in color.

It was hard to find enough light blue caps for this project!

Unfortunately, the best remedy I could come up with was
to spray paint the caps once they were all screwed down

Here is the end result: 




3 comments:

  1. This mural looks WAY easier than the big one I did this year. Totally borrowing this idea for next year! A few questions:

    You're only gluing them to the boards, right? They're light enough where they won't fall off, I'd think.

    Also, how are you hanging the individual boards on the wall?

    My school has been asking about large/temporary murals for some of the more barren hallways. We've got about a gazillion bottle caps left over from our mural this year. Your mural seem to fit the bill for what my school is looking for!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hello Painting with Brains - we are actually screwing down the caps. I need to post that next! What is really cool is that Home Depot donated a rental of 5 cordless drills with chargers. SO totally cool!! The students drilled and drilled and drilled!!! I am still drilling. Home Depot also donated the screws. We think we used over 3,000 screws and caps for this mural! I recommend screwing down the caps because the glued down caps tempt students too much to pick them off. We don't want that happening!! Home Depot also donated the particle board and the hardware to mount the mural. We are putting in drywall anchors and screws. The anchors hold 50 pounds each - so we are putting three into each board to make sure. I will be posting the next step real soon so you can see more photos!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hello Painting with Brains - I just updated this post to give more information regarding the questions you were asking. Hope this helps. More to come....

      Delete