Lunchbox McGillicuddy
07-01-2006, 03:28 PM
Here are the murals I and a friend worked on the past month at an elementary school. They wanted recreations of various famous paintings so that's what we (crappily) attempted. I'm not even a painter so doing this stuff was stressful for me, as I really cared a lot about getting them accurate. I'm not entirely happy with any of them, but we had a time limit so I had to give in eventually, realizing it'd be way too hard for me to perfectly recreate most of this stuff. Anyway, here they are:
Monet's The Walk- Lady with the Parasol. I did the figures and a bit of the sky/ground whereas my partner handled the majority of that.
Rockwell's Girl With The Black Eye. This was insanely problematic and stressful. I spent about two-three days on this one by myself trying to get the girl's proportions and face correct after it initially being pretty screwy. Then the principal/vice principal requested I add them in the painting rather than the traditional figures in the work, so that was more likenesses to freak out over. Ultimately, I did almost all of this one except some bits of the floor and the girl's skirt. It still has bits that need to be fixed or totally redone, but oh well, as I said, I had to let it go.
Degas' Dance Class. This is our largest one. It takes up about half of one side of the hallway we were working on. The pictures here were taken right after completion, but I later changed some of the figures to be more in proportion with each other. On this one I drew it all out before we painted and then when painting started I worked on the majority of the figures and the background/floor on the left side.
Picasso's Boy With The Butterfly Net. This one was one of the easier ones due to the simplistic style. It was done relatively quick as well, in just a day. I drew this one out and worked a bit on most of it besides part of the face, net, and the sky.
Magritte's The Great War. This was the first one we did and it was finished in a few hours. My partner did most of the figure and I did the sky.
Grant Wood's American Gothic. On this one we basically halfed it up so I did the male figure and the right side of the background. Looks like his head may be way out of scale eh? Hopefully it's just the angle of the picture, but who knows. I wouldn't doubt it if I just merely screwed it up. Still, it seemed a lot larger than that as I was working on it.
I have no idea what this painting is, nor did the Principal of the school, but she demanded it. My partner did most of this while I was working on the Rockwell, but I finished that one in time to work on the upper half of this one. I'm not a big fan of it, whatever it is.
Finally, we have Leonardo's The Mona Lisa. "Funny" story about this one: My partner drew this out on the first day, but drew it backwards as he was looking at a transparent print out turned the wrong way. I noticed before we started painting and told him we should re-draw it. He refused, and insisted that no one would ever notice, and alas, it ended up being painting backwards. I couldn't convince him otherwise. I struggled with getting him to listen to me about changing things numerous times with most of the paintings really, but anyway I'm getting off subject. Right as we finished, the Principal noticed it was backwards and made us paint over it. I was really angry at him, especially since he thought it was absolutely hilarious.
Anyway, needless to say, here you have the second attempt at the Mona Lisa. I'm not happy with it at all. I did all of the background, the details in the hair, and the horrible attempt at the face. I also went over the neck later on after this picture was taken. I really wish I had more time to work on this one, but sadly it just isn't possible.
Well, that's it. I hope you don't think they're too awful. A lot of this was really hard on me because I wanted so badly for them all to look perfect, but unfortunately it just wasn't within my skill level and my partner didn't care as much about that as I did. Also, it was difficult working from the print offs we had, as they weren't very detailed, thus leading to a lot of deviations from the original works. Then when you consider the size of these in relation to some of the originals, it only lead to more problems with proportion and such. Despite the problems, I think they turned out ok, but it still isn't something I'm necessarily proud of. I'd like to go back and work on some of them some more, but the Principal seemed happy with the work, and I suppose that's what matters as it was all for her.
Thanks for looking.
Monet's The Walk- Lady with the Parasol. I did the figures and a bit of the sky/ground whereas my partner handled the majority of that.
Rockwell's Girl With The Black Eye. This was insanely problematic and stressful. I spent about two-three days on this one by myself trying to get the girl's proportions and face correct after it initially being pretty screwy. Then the principal/vice principal requested I add them in the painting rather than the traditional figures in the work, so that was more likenesses to freak out over. Ultimately, I did almost all of this one except some bits of the floor and the girl's skirt. It still has bits that need to be fixed or totally redone, but oh well, as I said, I had to let it go.
Degas' Dance Class. This is our largest one. It takes up about half of one side of the hallway we were working on. The pictures here were taken right after completion, but I later changed some of the figures to be more in proportion with each other. On this one I drew it all out before we painted and then when painting started I worked on the majority of the figures and the background/floor on the left side.
Picasso's Boy With The Butterfly Net. This one was one of the easier ones due to the simplistic style. It was done relatively quick as well, in just a day. I drew this one out and worked a bit on most of it besides part of the face, net, and the sky.
Magritte's The Great War. This was the first one we did and it was finished in a few hours. My partner did most of the figure and I did the sky.
Grant Wood's American Gothic. On this one we basically halfed it up so I did the male figure and the right side of the background. Looks like his head may be way out of scale eh? Hopefully it's just the angle of the picture, but who knows. I wouldn't doubt it if I just merely screwed it up. Still, it seemed a lot larger than that as I was working on it.
I have no idea what this painting is, nor did the Principal of the school, but she demanded it. My partner did most of this while I was working on the Rockwell, but I finished that one in time to work on the upper half of this one. I'm not a big fan of it, whatever it is.
Finally, we have Leonardo's The Mona Lisa. "Funny" story about this one: My partner drew this out on the first day, but drew it backwards as he was looking at a transparent print out turned the wrong way. I noticed before we started painting and told him we should re-draw it. He refused, and insisted that no one would ever notice, and alas, it ended up being painting backwards. I couldn't convince him otherwise. I struggled with getting him to listen to me about changing things numerous times with most of the paintings really, but anyway I'm getting off subject. Right as we finished, the Principal noticed it was backwards and made us paint over it. I was really angry at him, especially since he thought it was absolutely hilarious.
Anyway, needless to say, here you have the second attempt at the Mona Lisa. I'm not happy with it at all. I did all of the background, the details in the hair, and the horrible attempt at the face. I also went over the neck later on after this picture was taken. I really wish I had more time to work on this one, but sadly it just isn't possible.
Well, that's it. I hope you don't think they're too awful. A lot of this was really hard on me because I wanted so badly for them all to look perfect, but unfortunately it just wasn't within my skill level and my partner didn't care as much about that as I did. Also, it was difficult working from the print offs we had, as they weren't very detailed, thus leading to a lot of deviations from the original works. Then when you consider the size of these in relation to some of the originals, it only lead to more problems with proportion and such. Despite the problems, I think they turned out ok, but it still isn't something I'm necessarily proud of. I'd like to go back and work on some of them some more, but the Principal seemed happy with the work, and I suppose that's what matters as it was all for her.
Thanks for looking.