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5.25.2012

We've Got the Beat - Dance Spectacular

What a couple of weeks it has been!  I was in crazy Art Show land for a couple of weeks, sorting, matting, e-mailing and preparing for art show.  Right before Art Show I agreed to do the backdrop for Dance Spectacular at one of my schools.  I almost didn't do it, but I loved the theme so much that I said yes. 

So right after Art Show I got busy on painting the backdrop for Dance Spectacular.  This year's theme was, "We've Got the Beat.  Flashback to the 80's" - so all the music was from the eighties.  
When planning the backdrop I knew I wanted to use neon colors -what is more 80's than neon?!?!  Then as I was googling '80's' pop culture Keith Haring showed up.  DUH!!!!  Keith Haring was literally ALL over the 80's.  Shirts, clothes, posters - anything that could be printed was printed with Keith Haring.  

I had my plan.  I had a graffiti style font I found on the internet, some Keith Haring pictures for inspiration -- off I went.  

I learned a valuable lessons while doing this backdrop.

Lesson 1:  Neon pain is EXPENSIVE
Lesson 2: You can't buy neon tempra or neon  acrylic paint  in stores. (well unless you want only 2 oz bottles).
Lesson 3: Spray paint saved the day.
I had originally planned to have the students help me paint this -but when it was clear that I would need to use spray paint, my plans changed.

All in all I love the way it turned out.  The kids loved it and it worked perfect for flashing back to the eighties!  

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

great job! how did you do this with spray paint?

Ms Novak said...

The people are spray paint - rest of it is whatever I had left over... some tempra, acrylic and even some house paint.

I put it on the floor - sprayed the figures then touched up the over spray and wahla!

Anonymous said...

What did you actually paint onto?

Ms Novak said...

Canvas backdrop. We have been order ours from etarps.com -- they are fantastic and you can do custom orders!

Lizette said...

Hi, are you going to use this backdrop again or are you prepared to sell it?