I specialise in outdoor and indoor wall murals.  As with all my projects the pupils are fully involved in the whole process.

Here is an example of how it works with a recent mural:  the pupils make the initial drawings and I bring these together into a final design which I send to the school for approval.

These are some of the children’s drawings.  I made a line drawing of a background design and copied the children’s drawings into it.  Then I made a coloured version so that the school could see what it was likely to look like – particularly important in this case since the original drawings did not have any colour!

I work with the children to make large stencils of their drawings so that the painted images are as close as possible to the original drawing.  Then, in small groups, they begin the painting.  I provide the support and technical experience to help them make their murals. This way a whole year group or Gifted and Talented or in fact a whole school can take part in the process and enjoy the feeling that they all participated in the project. Finally this is what the board looks like once the children have painted it all.

The penguins and turtles board is only part of a much larger wall mural which is based on the names of the children’s classes.  All of the boards were made in the same way from ‘sharks’ through to ‘macaws’ and ‘owls’.

Most of the murals are painted on boards since this means we can all work indoors and not have to wait until we have a warm sunny day in the summer!  However, some as you can see are painted straight onto prepared brick work.

All the children who have painted murals with me have thoroughly enjoyed the process and feel very proud of their work.

Here are some more of my murals:

Rainforest Mural.  This was painted by Year 2 children using their drawings of plants, animals, trees, birds and insects as the starting point of the design.  You can just see smaller versions of their drawings round the edge of the wall which runs along their playground.

This is a detail from the Playground mural at a school in Kenley. The children took a digital photograph and used it as source material to help them paint the mural.

Detail from a series of murals in a Dinner Hall in a school in Croydon

The mural and the two detail panels above are of animal book characters.  Each child in the school was asked to draw their favourite one – although we could only choose one Gruffalo etc so they had to make sure they didn’t just draw the obvious.  Their drawings were transferred onto the boards and the children painted them.

‘The Victorians’ mural. Part of a series of outdoor murals based on topics covered in different years at a school in Catford.