The Secret Revealed

As promised I will now reveal the secret to getting pictures on large surfaces.

You use an artograph. A simple tool. Basically a projector. You start with a small drawing or piece of clip art, and you place that under the machine. You turn out the lights in the room, and voila, the image that is projected onto your wall, or canvas, or Chinese screen, or whatever, becomes visible. Then all you do is trace around the image with a marking pen. That gives you a very nice line drawing to paint in later. It is true that it can be a little tricky as you are working in the dark, and the edges of the image can be a little fuzzy, and you have to do a bit of adjusting to get the image positioned right, but really, anyone can do it. Even if you have no drawing ability at all. It is just tracing. Really.

I have the smallest, most inexpensive artograph on the market and it will enlarge things up to ten times their size. That is what Sarah and I used on her screens. Here it is. Isn't it a beauty?

Here are some other artograph projects I have done this year. These were done using a borrowed, larger capacity artograph.

Activity Day Camp
This is a stake primary activity. We put on a day camp for the little activity days girls. It was called "Friends Around the World" and the idea was that we took an imaginary trip around the globe. Each class room was a different country with activities to go with that culture. Anyway, this was our logo enlarged as a banner. I am standing in front of it with the other ladies in the stake primary presidency. We are dressed as airline stewardesses. Hey, no comments! The little girls loved it when we said stuff like, "Good morning, welcome to Friendly Airlines" when we checked them in. And "May I help you find your seat?", or "Do you have your boarding pass?" when we directed them to our imaginary jumbo jet. They loved it I tell you!!!

Here was our friendly aircraft carrier. "All Aboard!" And "welcome to Friendly Airlines, we are glad you are flying with us today." Seriously, I said that at least 100 times that morning.

Multi Stake Youth Dance
Here is another project. This was for a multi stake teenage dance. Our theme was "Take a Walk on the Boardwalk" We painted the Atlantic city skyline along one side of the gym, and pillars at the entrance of the building to give the impression that you were walking into a fancy hotel.

Here are the pillars with potted palms that I painted on two banners that we hung on wire from
oops....um,
I am not telling how we hung those banners ....... because there are rules against putting things like eye screws or nails into the church building. Rules that can not be broken. Nope. The official story is that those banners were floating in mid air. All on their own.

That is Marc's knee peaking out from behind the right banner. He was my accomplice in crime. As usual.

We added large artificial potted palm trees to the entrance scene, and lighting, and paper bag luminaries, and the entrance that night was about as elegant as any teenager can appreciate - for the church building anyway. The guy inside the door is dressed in a tux playing the part of the maitre 'd. He gave the kids their dinner reservations.

Here is my friend Claudia standing in front of a section of the city skyline that we had just finished painting. I am showing her with the painting so you can see the scale. Big. The skyline was painted on theater canvas with latex house paint - after the drawing was traced on using an artograph.


Here is the very long canvas being installed in the gym, with a bad camera setting making the color weird.

And the next part of the scene

And some more of the scene

And the end of the scene. Whew! It was one very long piece of fabric, and it was very heavy. Claudia's husband Hal taped and smoothed and stretched and I don't know what all to get that baby on the wall.

And here is the wall that night. I have to say that this picture really doesn't capture the magic at all. My photography skills leave a lot to be desired. And it was dark in the gym which makes taking a picture from way far back especially hard. You kind of had to be there.
By the way, our wall made it onto the evening news that night! A film crew came and did the dance story as a special interest piece. We held the dance because the local high school principal had cancelled all dances at the high school for the entire year after noticing the general raunchy behavior that went on at those events. The kids weren't going to even have a Prom! The kids from our stake came and asked for a special dance to kind of take the place of the Prom. They promised no raunchy cloths or behavior. No drinking or drugs etc.

Hey, who could say no to THAT great idea?

It ended up as a dinner dance for about 600 well behaved, beautifully but modestly dressed, fun havin' teenagers. And they even thanked us. Honestly.

So, as you can see, there is a lot you can do with an artograph. A lot. Whew! I really need to shorten up my posts! It is almost Thanksgiving and I have table decorations to get made! And a house to clean. And a fridge to fill up....