Crowley Creations

Some colourful critters for a schoolyard wall.

Pumpkin windows for spooky month

I volunteer group had painted half of this school yard wall, and the Vice Principal of Scoil Eoin asked me to do a mural on the other side to finish it off. I took a picture of the wall and digitally drew over it to see what might work, trying out a hot air balloon design. I took my proposal to him and he approved it. It was fun making each hot air balloon unique, incorporating the Irish, Cork and local GAA colours.

I had done Christmas painting for the shop in 2019, and was given free reign to paint whatever I thought would be best on the windows. For the front window I took inspiration from Tchaikovsky's ballet The Nutcracker, as the Barbie adaptation which I watched as a child celebrated its twenthieth anniversary in 2021.

I knew it would be a more unique theme while still being recognisable. I did sketches of the windows to decide what I wanted to paint on each pane, as the windows were large and I wanted them to appear balanced.

I painted Clara in a ballet dress on one window, and The Nutcracker on another. I painted a christmas tree in the middle, and candy canes and lollypops on either side, to represent the land of sweets in the ballet. I both stencilled and handpainted snowflakes around the window, and filled in the bottom of the window with white to create a snowy ground.

For the side window, which only had three panes, I decided to expand upon what I had done in 2019. Instead of painting just the shop as a gingerbread shop, I did a whole gingerbread village to accompany it.