We have several small (from 2' x 2' to 5' x 5') murals painted by a company
who specializes in such works at school. They are of Sylvester and Tweety
Bird (our mascot is the Sylvester tomcat). You may want to consider several
small areas instead of one large mural. One idea is to have your mascot
placed near a speaker (ours is wall-mounted, up high, for overhead
announcements and emergency notification) with a megaphone in its hand. Our
speaker "sits" inside the large end of the megaphone. Around the image is
the word "Attention!" We have a small painting, probably 3' x 3', of Tweety
Bird sitting on a stack of three books, leaning against an apple, over the
door to our lounge, with the words "Tomcat" and "Lounge" on the spines of
the bottom two books. I am fortunate enough to have a separate glassed-in
room which contains the magazines, newspapers, and hand-me-down couches and
chairs; the most popular, noisiest, place in the library. Be sure to check
on copyrights if you are going to use a character such as the ones we use.
I'm assuming since a company did these, that the images aren't
copyrighted...
We do have a mural in our media center that was painted about 6 years ago. The
faces were supposed to reflect students at our school. It's rather dark and
depressing...some want to paint over it. Personally, I think it looks okay.
We're a K-8 and the art club students have not painted a mural in the
library but they have painted a number of them throughout the school. I
think they look great. In the library, the art teacher had them study
Andy Warhol and had one class paint a picture in his style and then we
hung them up as a mural in the library. I love using my walls as a
canvas for our talented students.
About six years ago some eighth grade art students created a fabulous mural around
the doorway/entrance to our K-12 school library. I suggested the Frederick
Douglass quote "Once you learn to read you'll be forever free" and the kids
designed the artwork. There's a drawing of a young black man looking up to the sky
with chains falling off his wrists, there's a scene on other side of door of a
lovely green tree with a kid sitting under it reading a book, plus several other
things I can't remember (I'm at home).
We have several elementary schools who have painted murals in the library
and out in the school---on stairwells, etc. Some of the elementary
libraries have painted scenes or trees to disguise columns. Remember you
can't use copyrighted characters. Original artwork is best. One word of
warning....... I STRONGLY recommend that you have ANY mural design approved
by all interested parties before painting on the walls. We had one
situation in a high school where a mural was painted on the wall of the
school and the design was protested by some of the students and community.
The mural was eventually ordered removed and was painted over......so get
your design/picture approved BEFORE painting!
Yes, I have a mural in the library. It was my original idea but the kids came up
with the theme of fairy tales/mythical creatures. It took a lot of time and I
needed consultation from the art teacher but the end result was just great. I had
to get the design approved by the principal.
Our mural is great--and still so many comments. We purchased the white foam core
boards and the size is around 3' x 5'. The A.P. students made rough sketches of
their design and the art teacher worked that out with them--I trusted his judgment.
There was no set theme--just something to do with libraries or reading. The first
ones had a lot of white and pretty typical of what I expected--slogans like expand
your mind--read a book; a cartoon head reading with planets and space ships around
the head; then it got more creative. A kid (not cartoon) behind a window, sun,
computer, books with a slogan of the library full of tools etc; one with separate
panels--great Einstein sketch, statue of liberty, animals, city, surgeons, etc; a
sci fi looking one with Stonehenge on wide side and a city scape with a futuristic
guy and a saying about the past and future; keys to many kingdoms with animal
collage; an anime animation type of open a book and imagination (that one is fun,
because the artist used her self as the model); our mascot is Lakers, so one mural
has an old sail ship, window to knowledge slogan. What was great is that each
student thought of unique ideas and all the quotes were ones they made up. We used
only A.P. students because transferring their ideas to the larger board was
difficult. They worked on their own, so it took a very long time to finish. The
boards are screwed into the wall at the top and bottom. We installed them over the
top of an existing bulletin board.
Good luck--I think you'll really like it once it is done
Pam Chowning
Librarian
Ezell-Harding Christian High School
574 Bell RD
Antioch, TN 37013
pam.chowning@ezellharding.com
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