Loon's Occasional Art

After months of having no real say in my Child Care job's murals, we finally got the chance to individually create our own. Logically, I went with the one thing I'm decent at drawing, animals. Unfortunately, despite my co-workers having seen me create this and put it up over the past week. It had to be taken down because it was not "thematic" for the month of February. I spent over 8 hours putting this together over the past week, and not once was this mentioned. As you can imagine, I was not pleased.

Still, despite this, I'm pretty pleased with how nice it looks. I'll post photos of the replacement when I finish putting it together, if I can be bothered to put any effort into it.
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I love it! If it were in my classroom when I was little, I would be begging fo sot next to it and copying it over all my papers. Your bosses are stupid.

I agree with Kelly! That mural is amazing and would have inspired the kids and sparked their imaginations. You did a very nice job! I can't wait to see the new one also.

It is fabulous !! I love the style, the colours, the composition, - everything

Yes, your bosses are stupid !!!!

Really appreciate the comments everyone, thank you.

Here is the replacement. I had only about an hour to throw this together, so it looks nowhere near as nice.
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That is FABULOUS! Great work again! At least it is still dino-themed.

Lol clever use of longnecks, love it!

Appreciate your thoughts, everyone.

Here's a bit of an update. I wanted to do a dinosaur craft with my kindergartners and found a template to make dinosaurs out of halved paper plates. Of course, they weren't very accurate, so I decided to make my own template. These were mostly finished last week, but I had one who didn't get to finish hers till today.
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Also, another template I created. This is a craft for next month. March 30th is Manatee awareness day and I figured that would make a cute craft. This is just the example I created. I didn't go literal, since I don't think the kids are going to make theirs all grey. I'm also sure theirs will be far more glamorous.
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Your kids made those dinosaurs awesome! They did such a great job! And I love the manatee idea too, please update with their creations when you do it. And very nice templates you made, great work all around!

Wow, that's so cool! I love all that creativity! I'm sure the kids are enjoying it so much
The idea for paperbag-manatee is just brilliant!

Wow, beautiful and original artwork, I love it!

Wonderful, very unique and it must be SO much fun for both children and adults

Thankyou for sharing ! I second Paige, and hope you will show us how it goes

Really lovely comments; thanks, everyone. The kids definitely had a lot of fun with it, and I'm happy so many of them recognized it as a Velocriaptor, even with the feathers. I will definitely be updating here once these new crafts are finished and especially when the new March mural goes up. I hope to start working on it tomorrow.

Alright, after being out sick for a bit last week, I finally got the March mural done. Of course, this wouldn't be my job if I wasn't dealt a blow right as I was about to finish. I had to shrink my mural from about 4 feet to 3 feet, which, whatever.

Anyway, since March is the month of Saint Patrick's Day, everyone had a shamrock theme going on. Of course, I had to include the famous Irish Elk, Megaloceros. Though, coordinating multiple pieces of paper and different colors ended up making the animal look a bit skewed. He's definitely a beefy guy, but I've never drawn a deer before, so I'm not gonna kick myself too much.
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He is STUNNING and I love his beefy quality. :) Great work again! The incorporation of the shamrocks is very clever! I love it.

Late to the party, love both the murals and the manatee puppet is adorable- love the gator on the tail! I would have loved being in your class when I was a kindergartner. Those velociraptor plates are great!

A magnificent deer

I truely love it !!! He has got personality, and he radiates strength and power.
I love the clover-pattern.
What is the Stonehenge-thing in the background ?

Saarlooswolfhound wrote:

He is STUNNING and I love his beefy quality. :) Great work again! The incorporation of the shamrocks is very clever! I love it.

Thanks. Looking back, I started making the deer on Friday, which is movie day for Child Care, and we watched Open Season, which has a similarly beefy deer as an antagonist, so I think it subconsciously influenced the look.
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pipsxlch wrote:

Late to the party, love both the murals and the manatee puppet is adorable- love the gator on the tail! I would have loved being in your class when I was a kindergartner. Those velociraptor plates are great!

Thank you! Not to congratulate myself (too much), but I do like to think I put a lot of effort into making fun things for the kids to do.

SUSANNE wrote:

A magnificent deer

I truely love it !!! He has got personality, and he radiates strength and power.
I love the clover-pattern.
What is the Stonehenge-thing in the background ?

Thank you! It's a neolithic tomb(potentially?) called "Poulnabrone dolmen." I had been searching for some kind of structure to fill out the picture and stumbled across it on Google. After doing some more research, I found out it's a bit anachronistic, since the structure is thought to have been built no more than 4,200 years ago, a few thousand years after the end of Megaloceros' existence.

hey but you are another Delgado!

all your posters are superb! Congratulations on such excellent work! I am sure there are many little children in your classes that LOVE all these animals you are drawing, and how exciting for them to make their own fantastic dinosaurs. These activities will stay with these kids for life - happy memories for sure.
I think my favourite has to the 2 red dinosaurs in love ha ha! they are wonderful :)
I am sure you are many of these children's favourite teacher

It's the first day of April and I'm happy to be able to share this month's mural. I had thought of an Easter theme, with feathered dinosaurs standing in for the traditional chickens, but I realized that I'm not that good at drawing feathers. Luckily, my brother had been wanting a Parasaurolophus, his favorite dinosaur, to hang up in his room, so I did that instead. This is specifically Parasaurolophus cyrtocristatus and the baby is based on Joe, the baby Parasaurolophus who is housed at the Alf Museum near my home. Plant evolution has always confused me, so I don't know if it's appropriate to have grass or flowers, but it needed to look "Spring-y."
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Ah, how great! Parasaurolophus is my daughter's favorite dinosaur too. I love the little baby Joe, I wasn't aware of it or the Alf Museum. But that baby is adorable!

Oh my goodness! Another fantastic mural! Beautifully done and great colors.

Lovely! My friend adores paras

These are spectacular! I hate that someone out there is deciding that the artwork needs to fit something specific and so aren't appreciating the skill and creativity of your murals. How excellent to have something different in the traditional holiday imagery. And they are so well drawn. I would have loved seeing those as a kid! I also love that you are so creative with your crafts with the kids, and make sure the dinos are more correct. I had strong feelings about those kinds of things as a kid (though I didn't know much about dinosaurs), and I would have loved a teacher making animals realistic.