Aboriginal mural brightens up a dull school wall

I spotted this stunning mural on a wall at a local high school. Given that the architecture of this building is fairly basic, I can speculate that this mural has vastly improved its appearance.

The dramatic black borders and flowing river design give a coherent background which looks great at a distance, while the beautifully detailed designs of the animals sustain interest for closer viewing. I presume the students at the school were involved in the production of this mural, at the very least for the hand prints, but probably for a whole lot more than that.

A world of books for kids!

Planet earth library display

Close-up of Australia with popular children’s books

This display was more of a challenge than I expected. Most of the displays I had done to date were simply fun illustrations rather than accurate representations. After all, who would notice if a bridge were wider than it should be, or a tree was off-centre, or if a nose was a bit bigger than it really ought to be? But when I started drawing this poster I suddenly realised that if I left off an Indonesian island, or if Taiwan was in the wrong spot, or if my map of Australia was missing a bay… disaster! Anyway, it worked out OK in the end (or at least no-one in our multi-cultural school complained that I’d left off their birthplace) and my map-drawing skills improved to boot! Every child in the school decorated a star and placed it on the wall, so the end product looked great with around 400 colourful stars surrounding the earth.