More mural-painting pics!

The mural-painting has been fun, but challenging...so much work getting all these different windows painted, and then we will still have to put them all together inside the frames and install them on the wall...but it's been great that there have been some talented painters in the group who have been there to help a lot. Mainly one student, Dasha, stands out...she was the only person who was there all weekend working on the biggest "window" painting, the fantasy world that she had originally designed. At first I was reluctant to let her take so much ownership over painting it because I was afraid it would be stylistically different from the rest of the windows, but she was so eager to help out and I quickly realized that she is a very skilled painter. Now I think I will actually let her painting style influence how I finish the rest of them! She is also fast, and surprisingly enough it became pretty easy for me to give her direction even though the only way I could communicate with her was through hand gestures, showing pictures/examples, and writing down a few words in English that she knew on paper. I started asking her to paint details in some of the other windows--she's good with drawing things like cats and dogs from imagination. In general though, one of the challenges of the project has definitely been my (and Nastya's!) inability to give clear directions to individual students, e.g. if I want them to paint something in a different way or stop what they are doing. If I were to do this project again in the future I probably would have made the painting component simpler in some way so that it would be fool-proof for everyone to know what to do without a lot of direction. But it has also been rewarding realizing how much can be communicated without words, in terms of showing someone how to paint or what something should look like. And I think it'll be great that we have all these detailed paintings with so much variety that came out of the ideas in everyone's sketches. I hope everyone in the group is having fun with it too...
Ahh...genuine acrylic "kraska!" And so many nice colors!
Priming a real wooden carved window pane.

Go Valya!

.Completed backgrounds of the classroom and museum windows
Mixed colors...
A primed window pane.

Students paint in the background.


Nastya is the next Matisse!! (mixed all those bright colors!)
NYC skyline...a place all these students should visit!
Dasha's fantasy masterpiece!

Working on the neighborhood window



Completed neighborhood window, with my detail work...notice the distinctive St. Petersburg tram, which runs right by the school. The younger students also envisioned having an "aquapark" right in their neighborhood. The dog is eating out of a bowl with the "I love NY" logo on it,but you can't see that in this picture...