Case Study: LSC Mural Painting (Part 2)

Client: Life Student Care (Yishun)
Team: Nanyang Polytechnic Community Service Club
Purpose: Design and paint all the walls outside as part of of LSC Open House
Target Audience: 7 - 14 year old school children

Umbrella Projects Supervisor: Ranie
Project IC: Salina
Project Assistant: Merlin

As this is the first time Salina is in-charge of an event, I did what I can to help her, such as problems that we encountered. I requested Owen, our club's president, to send an email to all the club's members to seek additional helpers for the project. Both of us also decided to make the whole of next week to work on the final drawing and painting.

The Third Meeting (28 September)
Owen managed to help us get some of his classmates to assist us. But even then, I still remain as the only design student in the team. Because we have to draw human silhouettes, our first activity (at around 10 am) was me teaching everyone the basics of drawing human. But after awhile, one of the members told me if we should enlarge the human silhouettes on a piece of A3 paper and cut it out and trace it on the wall.

Practice sketches of the team members.

Seeing how the rest of the team is not used to drawing realistic human figures, I have no choice but to agree. And so we decide to start work, 2 of us will go to the nearest printing shop to print a copy of the human silhouettes while the rest of us start on the painting of the backgrounds.

When the 2 dispatched members returned, they realized the cut-outs are too small. Luckily the officer was able to enlarge it for us with the photo-copier in her office.

We did a rough coat of paint on the background first. We then did a second layer of paint, touching up the rough areas as we go along. Then we trace out the human figures and painted them. After that, we did a shadow effect on the silhouettes while touching up on the red and blue lines at the top of each wall. We gave the all the silhouettes cut outs to the officer so that she may use them to enhance the wall next time.

As the "Art Director", I did what I can by directing the team what color we should use for each of the figures. I also help by providing solutions when any of the team members got stuck with a design problem.

I did, of course, by helping out with the painting too. And because of the many changes and my goal of wanting to finish everything on the same day, I simplified most of the designs to save time and allowed creative freedom for the rest of the team for some of the designs.

I also helped by drawing 3 of the human silhouettes as they are unable to be printed out on paper. I took this chance to put my "designer's mark" (someone or something, usually themselves or something that represents themselves) on my artwork. It is a silhouette of a boy in shorts holding a paintbrush (even though it is not very obvious). It is special as it is the only silhouette wearing short pants.

I also did the sketching of the NYP logo (also with our club's initials CSC below it) and I took great care to ensure that the NYP logo looks presentable. This is because NYP is our school and we are representing them to the public and thus the logo is treated with respect and the utmost importance.

We ended all the painting at around 10 minutes before 8 pm. We then had a debriefing on this project as a whole. In the debriefing, many of us felt that the project was tiring but fun. Salina, some of the team members and I felt that we are able to work together by putting aside our differences and there is still good planning despite last minute changes. I felt that there is a lack of participation in brainstorming though and we could do better in future events.

Personally, I will admit that I made my fair share of design and leadership mistakes, but seeing this is my first time doing this type of community service, it does help in preparing me in this kind of activity in the future. I am glad and proud that I am finally able to apply what I learned in my course not just in real life, but in the form of community service.


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