The Rosa Valdez Project: The Very Hungry Caterpillar Mural Part 1

The thing I like most about my art is that I never know where it will take me. Sometimes I'm taken to a  fantastic realm of knights and dragons, cities filled with super heroes and sometimes off to a galaxy far, far away.

Every now and then my art takes me to a place not so far away. A place with really good people.

Over the last month or so I had the great opportunity to be a part of a volunteer effort (initiated by Girl Scout Junior Troop #564) with the focus of adding a children's  library to the Rosa Valdez Early Childhood Learning Center here in Tampa. For over a hundred years the center has been helping families and children in their community by providing childcare, therapeutic services, behavioral counseling and family support.

The concept for the look of the library was to incorporate murals based on the artwork of Eric Carle's book The Very Hungry Caterpillar. What started out as a picture or two to be featured in the library evolved into several larger murals featuring the Caterpillar and the Butterfly from the story!

Entrance Wall Concept

Then the idea was to paint some of the food the Caterpillar eats as you walk up the stairs toward the library.

Stair Wall Concept

Once at the top of the stairs the food would continue down the hallway just before you get to the library.

Hallway Concept

Then, once in the library, the Butterfly would be featured prominently at the end of the room!

Library Wall Concept

For any of you who have followed this blog and my artwork know this is a huge leap stylistically for me. My own style features solid line work pretty heavily, resulting in an almost animated look. It's been a few years since my last mural, so I really took to the challenge of capturing the look of Eric Carle's work and had a blast slinging some paint! The illustrations for his books are done using a collage technique with hand painted paper, cut and layered into the images of bears and bugs and other fun stuff. For these murals there was no collage or cutting paper. As the colors are pretty random I was shooting mostly for an accurate representation of the style rather than an exact translation.

With the concept fleshed out we actually submitted the idea to Eric Carle's people for approval. We got the green light and the only request we had for alterations was to include the fruit and veggies rather than some of the  junk food pictured in the book.

With the official OK, a few quarts of paint and brushes in hand I set out to paint some big Caterpillars and Butterflies!