Mountain Dew Bench is complete!

After promising to update the pop art park benches in the school's park, I was able to finally paint the bench on the top of the hill. It was easy to complete the theme - a Mountain Dew on the mountain. So in July when there seemed to be 2 consecutive days with no rain, I went to update the 5 benches my students and I had painted in the spring of '08. It took 7 hours to repaint, repair and revamp them before I could begin the last one. At 7:30 at night with clouds looming I went home to rest. The next day my mind was set and I completed the last bench. It only took about 4 hours as I had painted the background shape the day before.  I was happy with the results and satisfied that I had completed the job. I hope it will leave a lasting impression on the school, the park, the community. The benches really pop!

Pop Art Park Bench Project

This was one of the projects that I had the most fun with in art with my grade 5 to 8 students. I was asked to paint some park benches near the playground. The community bought paint. I had freedom to design what I wanted. So I chose the Orange Crush can as a bright orange bench to paint. From a distance you can see the orange slice on the back of the bench. We are a nutrition positive school so I was worried about using pop as a theme but no one seemed to care. People from the community liked them and said so as we were painting them. The students did the backgrounds and I did the fine details to perfect the letters and droplets and shadows. I did Sprite and 7Up on either side of the Crush bench mainly because that was the pop sold in our machine at school. Also they were blue and green.
The next fall I painted a Coke and Pepsi bench because they were near the ball diamonds and the pepsi can had a girl on it with a baseball cap. Coke and Pepsi are rivals and these benches faces opposite ball diamonds. The Pepsi bench was much more creative than the Coke bench. Kids loved them. The idea was to avoid graffitti. But they still spray painted red on the white Coke letters and blue on the white Pepsi letters.
This past year the community asked me to paint the park bench on the top of the hill. I plan to do Mountain Dew on it. The other school had painted red and white stripes on it and green and yellow stripes.
I've written an article on murals and how to paint them at Bright Hub. The article is called Pop Art Park Bench. It talks about the materials, method and mural websites to check out. This has been one of the lasting art projects I have done at this school and one of the most rewarding.

Google For Doodle Contest

A writer at Associated Content, Linda StCyr, wrote an interesting article about a contest Google is having for students. Teachers have to register their students in grades K-12. The students try to create a new Google logo. The theme is What I Wish For The World. The rules are found at the website, http://www.google.com/doodle4google/, given in her article. Only U.S. students are allowed to enter.

See the complete article at: http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1444408/doodle_4_google_2009_information_you.html?cat=4

You will also find my article about this contest at www. webupon.com
The link for this is: www.webupon.com/Web-design/Doodle-4-Google-Contest-What-a-Great-Googley-Idea.569461

Today Google's Logo is Dr. Seuss characters, to celebrate his birthday. At the contest website you can find out about how Mr. Hwang comes up with the logos he does. He also shows his favorites. Check them out. I like the Mozart logo. Which is your favorite??