Flight Murals (September 2005)

These murals were done for Glenn Martin Elementary School (Santa Ana).  Four murals were painted with an aerodynamic theme. I had the Discovery Game in these murals as well. There would be a related question next to the picture of a bird. For instance:

Q1. "What airplane is like the hummingbird?" would be next to the picture of a hummingbird. The children would then have to find A1 somewhere in the mural that would say "Helicopters". 

Q3. would be"What helps an owl to fly so silently?" and its answer would be A3. "Special Feathers".

Click here for more detailed pictures of the flight murals. 

"To learn to read is to light a fire" - Victor Hugo (June 3, 2005)

I designed and sketched out this mural for an L.A Works project at Sunrise Elementary School in downtown Los Angeles. It was painted by thirty volunteers from Deloitte Touche. The principal wanted me to show children reading and spending a lot of time in the school (as they usually did) and hence the journeying sun.The mural is about 50 feet in length and 9 feet in height.

Click here for more detailed pictures of the book mural.

Fairy Tales and Jungles (2000)

These murals were done in India for Chiragh Grammar School.

I painted this mural of Snow White in the forest for the kindergarten. I took it from a book that I had as a child. I had always loved this particular picture for the animals, and wanted to share it with the little children. The mural is about 6 feet square in dimensions.

 I had had such fun doing the Snow white mural, that I decided to do another one. I wanted to get the children interested in the colorful world of birds. So I painted this jungle scene with lots of birds hidden away in different bushes. This mural was about 15 feet in length and 7 feet in height and was extremely instructional. I learnt a great deal about perspective and painting on a large scale.

After the detail of the jungle mural, I decided to have some fun and do a quick, colorful mural with an interesting theme. The children in the school loved to watch me paint and so I painted a mural with  aircraft  so that I could talk to them about what was so cool about airplanes. Although the mural isn't as satisfactory from the artistic point of view, I did get many children and especially girls interested in the aerodynamics of aircraft!

This was my first painting after coming to the States. I was very happy to have started a new phase in my life and to be independent and free. I wanted to express some of my joy and decided to paint a brightly colored painting for my room. I chose this lighthouse scene because I have always been struck by the beauty of a solitary lighthouse. I also liked the water and boats in the scene for they appropriately expressed my excitement at living near an ocean and seeing adventurous little boats all around.

The painting was about 12 feet by 9 feet and it was quite complicated from the start. I didn't want to paint straight on the wall, so I taped huge pieces of thick cardboard and painted them. When it was done, it was no easy job to raise it and then to keep it stuck to the wall! It fell many times over the course of the next few weeks, until I got some evil-looking horseshoe hooks and hammered them through the painting into the wall. This was my first time painting with acrylics and I had a lot of fun trying to achieve a shaded effect with individual colors. I like the reflecting water and the boats (although a few have been cut off from this picture due to the camera angle) in this painting.