Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Post-It Mural


I thought about saving this post until our Post-It mural is complete, but that won't be until April and I figured perhaps someone out there may also be inspired by this idea, so here's where we are right now:

I have been completely inspired by a blog post that I came across while searching for images for a presentation on Andy Warhol. Despite finding the video on YouTube, I cannot get it to load into Blogger, so you can find the post, with a time lapse video of the Post-It note mural they created here. I am so inspired, that I have decided to create my own Post-It notes mural with my students! Their image was Pop Art, and it works really well for this techniques, so I decided to stick with Pop Art.   Pop Art is one of my favorite styles, so it's amazing it's taken me this long to decide to have an art show with a Pop Art theme.

To begin, my student teacher and I chose an image. We decided we wanted to go with something from Roy Lichtenstein, as I thought his comic book style would not only interest the students, but also work well with the pixelation we needed to create. While searching, we came across his painting, "Sunrise," and we agreed that that's the one. Mrs. Leland (my student teacher) pulled the image into PhotoShop and used a filter to make it appear in squares. Each square represented one Post-It note. Because we are doing this with elementary students, we decided to transfer that image into Excel to make the squares more obvious to the kids.

Transferring the image into Excel. Each square is one Post-It note.

Finished the transfer! It took me about 3 1/2 hours and is eight pages to print!

It's going to be AMAZING!

Close up of the Excel spreadsheet.
Our plan is to tape roll paper together to make a canvas large enough to accomidate our image. Together, we'll draw out the squares on the large paper. We have an atrium, which is where it will be hung for the art show. It is also where we will work on it. The plan thus far is to have grades 3-5 work on it once during their art classes. I have all of those classes before lunch, so the paper can be rolled up when the last class of the day is done with their contribution.

3 comments:

Elizabeth said...

Ambitious project! I can't wait to see the finished result :) Do you have a plan to stop the post-it notes falling, or will you just go with the flow?

Jodi said...

We live near the headquarter of 3M, and have a lot of parents that work there. I'm hoping to get a donation of Post-Its and double sided tape.

Jessica Young said...

What a creative idea! Looking forward to seeing photos of the finished project. I bet the students will really enjoy working on this.