PPP Planning : Blog us your summer
- Post your experiences observations activities and reflections to your PPP blog labelled OUIL602prep
- You should be researching and contacting agencies, studios, practitioners, and collectives that interesting you
- Research into further study, MAs, PGCEs, Training and development opportunities. What do you want to be?
- List the professional skills and knowledge you wish to further develop over the next 12 months and research into how you will develop them
- Write list, action plans and timetable your activities, and stick to them.
A summary presentation of your creative strategy saying this is what I'm about this is what I want to do and what I want to find out about
- Summary of your personal and professional aims
- evidence of research into professional practice and progression opportunities undertaken over the summer
- a summary of further professional research activities to be undertaken as part of level 6
MOO'd
So over the summer I had spoken with MOO'd cereal cafe planning on putting up some of our work for a permanent exhibition which seemed like a great opportunity to get involved in. They wanted something monochrome which meant that I would be able to explore my sketchbook over the summer and then further some work for the walls.
However, MOO'd stopped getting in touch and their cereal cafe every time I passed was closed, so I am not sure if they were having some difficulties or there was a problem where they had to shut down perhaps? It kind of made me feel they were unreliable. I also pushed for everyone to get involved in class and nobody took me up on this so I am going to wait until were back from over the summer when people have more time and are actually in Leeds. I think with everyone going home, including myself, it would be harder to produce work and take it to them whereas if we were back at University it is much easier to print and to get there.
School
I did say that I wanted to get involved more in local opportunities and so being back home quite a lot in Middlesbrough over the summer meant I was going to have to look for things to get involved in there. Middlesbrough is quite small there is not much going on but my mother works in a school that happened to get in touch.
They were looking for mural designs for their walls and my mum put one of them in touch with me via email.
She asked me if I would be able to design a mural for their history department based on World War 1. At this point I was still working part time in Leeds so I would have to travel back and forth.
I went into the school to discuss this further; she showed me around her humanities department and how they had decorated it thus far. She also showed me the wall I would be designing and it was huge. I asked what sort of thing she had in mind and she said a soldier with a grey background that then spread out and lead into a field of poppies down the other side. The wall had windows and a door which initially she did not want covering. I said it would break up the design and that perhaps she could consider the design also covering those. However, with windows it would have blocked out the sunlight. The windows were only facing indoors so were not letting in natural sunlight anyway, so she told me to go ahead with painting over them. This meant the design would need paint that covered both areas.
Paints :
I started to research into mural painting as it is not something I have done before, nor would feel completely comfortable with. I asked around to my peers that I knew had painted on walls before and got in touch with some paint manufacturers to ask which would be best. I was told that acrylic paint with an acrylic varnish would cover and finish both surfaces. I emailed back and forth to the head of department of the school to tell her this, and ask for her to order them.
Design :
I sent over an idea of what I had been asked for just to get a rough idea of the layout I played around in Photoshop. I took a World War 1 soldier silhouette in black looking to the left because I figured that would make your eyes look left towards the field of poppies. I did a highlight of white around the silhouette with a grey gradient that lead to green and a field of poppies. This was just a rough idea, to figure out how she wanted it doing. I figured she might want the poppies to be more flat and look like more of a field with grains of grass or she might want the soldier to be detailed, in a different stance etc.
Pricing :
After sending my design we discussed pricing. Speaking in person I asked did they have a budget, which she was unsure of, and had told her that I would be charging by the hour depending on an estimate of how long the work would take me. With such a big wall and needing paint areas to dry over night etc I estimated it taking 4-5 full days of 9-5. This also meant that I would be missing out on working at my part time job for those 4-5 days and would need to cover travel costs. It had to be worthwhile for me, to miss out on the days and for the petrol back home.
In order to get an idea of what to charge I thought of sending my design to an online business already that speicalises in murals, asking them what they would charge for the work. I sent them the size of the wall and my design. They replied :
£1390 for a company that specialises in mural painting. I thought that was pretty steep! As I am not a professional at this, and doing work for a school that is probably on a budget I needed to be a little bit more realistic. However, this was good to fall back on and show them if they felt I was to charge too much. It was also good to know that he felt my design was worth that amount and to know the tools necessarily to complete it. I hadn't even thought about scaffolding I was just going to use a ladder!
I only earn minimum wage in my part time job with tips on top of that, so if I was to cover what I would earn within those 5 days usually, with petrol on top of that then I would be happy. I feel I need to know more about what to charge people for this sort of thing. I am happy giving out pricing of my own commissions and digital work but for murals I think it is completely different. Especially for a school.
More work :
Other departments had heard about her idea of painting in the humanities department. She had took it to the head teacher who was really pleased with the idea and felt that this could be expanded by painting the entrance to each department in the school - result! If I pulled this off and did it well, I could paint each department meaning more money. I started to think I was going to need to take some time off work if this was going to be such a big job. I then went on to think about the publicity I would get from doing this, and future work. I don't have to limit myself to digital designs, I could actually do this. I looked into possibly getting a projector to project my design onto the wall and make it more accurate than painting free hand. It is not really my cup of tea to be painting free hand onto a wall, but it was going to be an experience so why not?
My boyfriend is a technical whiz and works in IT he told me that I just needed a lead for my mac as the school already had a projector so we went looking at leads to buy to project my design. I also sent these over to their head of department for them to pay for as part of the job.
Further price talk :
I decided on £8 an hour because it felt realistic, I had produced a design I would be working 9-5 flat out on for 4-5 days. 8x8=64 which over 5 days was £320. For one wall I felt this was pretty good and if I was to be offered more work
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