Students of Ms. Jacquelyn Collins‘ Drawing and Painting 10 class learned about famous artists, paintings, and the Patron system through a mural project for the portables.
The class was originally supposed to make an Eiffel tower for the Winter Ball, but the idea fell through. The mural idea was born when Mr. Jordan Thies came into their block A class and shouted, “I want a mural for my portable! I’m in that portabl
e and I just really need a mural!” Students of the art class started asking other teachers if they wanted a mural. As a result, Ms. Collin’s class will also paint murals for Mr. Chan’s and Ms. Ross’ classrooms.
“I loved the idea,” said Ms. Collins. She explained that every classroom has a different wall space, so each mural will be different. Some students will be painting Starry Night by Van Gogh and others will be doing a painting by Monet. Each group of students took the time to do their research on what paintings fits the teacher’s interest and matches their style and space. They used a grid system for enlarging and changing the proportion of the small pictures of the painting to the larger mural size.
“We learned a lot about different artists from the past and the patron system,” said Kaitlyn Shaw. “Our group was assigned to do a historical German expressionist painting, which was not a really popular painting, but we felt that the message in the painting needed to be recognized by others. We felt that this project was about honoring the art from the past and helping others to realize the wonderful things that happened in history, to honor and to remember those paintings. This project was a learning experience; we got to learn how to use math in art, and we were taught lots of different styles of painting. We presented our mural to Mr. Barazzuol (another portable teacher) and he really liked it, and we just didn’t want to let anybody down,” said Shaw.
