___So close, and yet so far. The finished mural will have close to 400 squares and triangles. There are about 30 students in the class. That is a lot of squares per student. Not every student is in class every day, and some students take several days to finish a single square.

We're almost done, with about 75 pieces left to finish. This image to the left is a stack of finished squares awaiting application to the plywood. The final size of the mural will be about 20' x 5'..._

____My suggestion of, "Your paint is too bright, try adding some white," met with confused looks too many times in a row, and I realized that the difference between "light vs. dark" and "bright vs. dark" was not well understood by the students.

Adding white paint will make something lighter, but it will also make it duller, especially in combination with black paint...

The hardest part of this project is mixing paint colors accurately. One of the largest obstacles is that not everyone can see the same range of color. Some people are color blind in the classically understood sense, but some just have a limited range of color visibility.

Throughout our time working on this project, many students have been able to identify specifically their own limitations when it comes to colors they can or can't see. I will suggest a square for...

_The "real" mural will be done with paint in the pointillist sty- le rather than tissue paper, and will be installed perma- nently in the school library. We decided to make the grid an- gled 45° in homage to the Big Emma piece by Chuck Close. Our reference photo is of a bi- ome (naturally), and one that all of the students have exper- ienced in person. The mural was originally divided into indi- vidual sheets of twelve squares. Students chose one square to copy with painted dots. No one was allowed to do more than one square per sheet. Further into the..._

__As practice for our final mural, we embarked on a little tissue paper pointillist adventure. I found this picture of a rafter that seemed perfect for this at- tempt. Unfortunately, I can't find the title of the piece or the name of the original artist. Ev- erywhere it appears on the in- ternet seems to be just using it as an anonymous example of pointillist art. Each student was given one square of the final piece, and tasked with replica- ting it as closely as possible...
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Well, pointillism, that's what. One of this year's projects fo- cuses on the complexity and detail of a biome (yup, back to biomes and 6th graders again) through studying the whole-is-greater-than-the-parts as- pect of pointillist art. One of the most well-known employ- ers of the technique was Geor- ges Seurat, artist of The Sun- day Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. Much com- mentary can be found about pointillism and this painting in particular, with emphasis on..._

_ I left for several weeks, and then came back just as the fin- ished boxes were due. They were amazing! A two-dimen-sional photograph can never do justice to these master-pieces. Most of the finished pieces needed no explanation at all. Through the elements the students included, it was clear which conflict they had chosen. For many of them, the intense emotion of the conflict was effectively portrayed as well. Here are just a few of them...
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__Since I was going to be un- available for the actual crea- tion of the boxes, I had to set up a complete resource for fin- ishing the project without me. The Project wall contained in- structions and examples, and the table had all of the art supplies needed. Conflict Sha- dow Box - The Background Piece: Describe your conflict in one (artistically represented) word or phrase. What is your conflict about, simplistically? The Clear Front Piece: Depict the "shadow" cast by your conflict upon the world today...

__Time to start creating the sha- dow boxes! And by "time to start" I of course mean that I'm just now posting this, 11 months later, so the shadow boxes have long been complet- ed and those students aren't even in 7th grade anymore, but anyway... Each student will be creating a shadow box to showcase elements of their chosen conflict. The boxes will be made of wood, about 3 in- ches deep, with a plexi-glass front. All parts of the box...

__Playing once again with Goo- gle's reverse image search and the visually similar image re- sults. My photographs are on the left, images by others on the right. Click any image for its source. I think the most in- teresting result this time around was the steering wheel shot for "Deep Tall." Almost all of the visually similar images presented by Google were vir- tually the same image, but in- teriors of slightly different...

_Google has a reverse image search, where you can drag a photo from your computer into the search box, and it will find that image on the web. This is great if you're wondering if anyone has stolen your im- ages, or used them in a way you don't agree with on the internet. This would be un- credited instances of your art— impossible to find by simply searching for your own name. I found a few myself... But the really fun part about...