Over the last two weeks Executive Director, Lissie Stewart has been working on a mural for the NOLA Nature School.

The Honeybees wanted a mural of a magical swamp scene for their classroom. Lissie created a sketch that the teachers approved and outlined the scene on the wall. Then the students and teachers got to work.

The teachers and students worked together to fill in the base colors of the mural. they started with defining the trees and adding the black to the darkest spot of the mural.

Lissie added details to the painting as members of the Bobcat classroom assisted in filling in the colors of the background. Slowly the painting started to take form and some of the overly stylized shapes became points of interest within the painting.

All of the teachers got a chance to add to the painting and involving the children in the process gave them ownership of their classroom and the new addition.

Groups of two to four students at a time would assist in adding different shades of green, purple and blue to the mural after the base of the trees were painted.

Lissie went back over the work and added stars in the blackest area of the mural. She completed the project by filling in the green around the tree canopy. The whole school is excited about the new scene in the Honeybee classroom. Lissie had a blast facilitating the collaborative project! Thank you to NOLA Nature School for providing such a magical space for children to explore and for including the NOLA Artist Incubator in the process!