EliseHeaterHakwenProjects2022

      Today, we finished up everything that needed to be done to get ready for the parade tomorrow. This basically included all of the murals. First, Gaby and I started by painting the rest of the squid in the fish mural. We also fixed up the shark a bit. When we were both gone on Friday, someone decided to replace our dark red with a regular red. This was not ideal because it meant that we would have to go over all of the existing dark red with regular red. We decided, for the sake of time, that the two different shades of red looked OK, and we just focused on covering any white areas. This is what the octopus ended up looking like; we're both happy with our work.            After finishing that, I had to go fix up and finish the jellyfish mural. This was a very tough process because the people who had started it didn't save their colors from before, so we had to try to color match them, which was difficult. It also didn't help that we ...

      On Thursday, Gaby and I spent nearly the entire day working on the sea-themed mural. There are still a few more that need to be finished besides this one. The reason why these murals have been taking us so long is that they are so detailed. For example, the dragon took a while because of all the scales we had to make, which required a thin brush and lots of patience. And the octopus on the current mural is taking us a while because the suckers are so small and there is a lot of shading required to make it look like an actual octopus. Speaking of octopuses, we have sort of given up on our octopus costume. We only have a day left to work on it, but we will spend the rest of that day finishing any murals that aren't done.       Here's a picture of our progress so far. As you can see, the picture reference is different compared to the painting. We had to work around a problem with the coloring; in the original picture (the one that the students edite...

     On Tuesday and Wednesday, we finished painting the dragon mural. We asked Sklad for his opinion on the finished product, and he gave us a few things to add. We needed to add a darker purple color in the areas where the shadow was darkest. At first, he suggested outlining these areas with a sharpie to make them stand out more, but that didn't quite do the job. It didn't add enough contrast and depth to the piece. So we decided to go in with the purple paint to add a darker shadow. This added a lot more dimension and depth to the head. I also went in and had to paint over part of the face with pink to redo the teeth, since they weren't visible at all with the current paint job. I used our printed photo as a reference, and improvised by first sketching them in with a pencil and then going in with a light pink for highlights, and outlining the shape of the teeth with the dark purple. I finished by sort of blending the teeth into the rest of the face with water, and it en...

      Most of Thursday and Friday were spent working on another mural. While the students in the class are good at painting the base of the mural and creating the initial pencil sketch, Gaby and I are helpful because we can add the more complicated details that take more time and patience. Most of the students want to move on from the murals because they have costumes to make, while Gaby and I don't. We are making a float/costume on the side, but it isn't our first priority. This is the mural we are currently working on:              This mural is much more complicated than the previous mural of the elephant. The details are more intricate because of the scales and the fairy wings. The student in charge of it asked us to help her after she had painted the background blue. We started by making a base for the pink because it was the most abundant color. Then we just made different shades of that for the highlights and shading. After w...

      On Monday, Gaby and I helped Sklad and Ms. Buckley clean out their closet and sort materials that could be used for the costumes and floats. It took a lot of strength and time to figure out what would go where, and some of the boxes we had to lift were very heavy. We went through a lot of different costumes from Halloween and hung them all up on a rack. We were mostly just focused on making the closet look more organized and tidy while filtering out any materials that could be used for the parade. Here's a timelapse of some of the work we did. (I hurt my finger in the process...it was fine though)     Tuesday and Wednesday were mostly spent working on a mural that some of the students finished. It looked good, but it needed to be cleaned up quite a bit. The colors needed to be changed, and the entire piece of cloth needed to be covered in paint (even though the edges will be stretched out onto the frame, it's important to paint it all the way to the edge s...

     The first week was very eventful! On Thursday, our class visited the Cleveland Zoo to get ideas for what we want our final creation to be. The end goal of the intensive is to make an animal of some kind, whether that be a float, mask, consume, etc. Even though my friends and I are just there to help out Sklad and Ms. Buckley, we still plan on creating something for the parade like the rest of the students. We saw many different animals on our trip, but the highlight was the capybara. My friends and I had already planned to make something based on a capybara because we love them. Here are some pictures I took during our visit.  (This is a capybara)     After going to the Zoo, my friends and I now want to make a float of a capybara, but we want to make it interesting somehow (give it fun colors or wings).      On Friday, we spent most of the day helping Ms. Buckley create the float for the murals. There are going to be four murals and they...

 I wanted to help with Parade the Circle mostly because Sklad and Ms. Buckley gave me the offer, and I adore them so I couldn't deny that. I also really love arts and building things, which is what the intensive is focused on. I hope that I can be helpful with things that freshmen and sophomores can't exactly do, like using certain tools or building things, etc. I can't wait to see what the final product will be after working with the other seniors helping out.