Woodland Classroom Animals

I realize that on the surface, the title of this post makes no sense whatsoever; as though I just decided to string three random words together in the hopes that no one would notice. Well I assure you that there is both a rhyme and a reason to it.

By now I'm sure you are all familiar with the collaborations between the Land of Le Beef and Woodland Pre-Schools (more info on that here and here). Each of the Woodland classrooms is named after a different animal, and in this latest Beef-Woodland collaboration I went in and illustrated  each classroom's character on a chalkboard that is mounted outside of the room. The result was unlike anything that the Land of Le Beef has produced before...

the Montessori Academy

You might remember that I recently did two small murals at a preschool in Hong Kong ( one of Woodland Pre-School's 10 locations in the city). Well those murals turned out so awesome, that Woodland insisted that I adorn the walls of their newest, most spectacular school yet - the Montessori Academy on Caine Road.

In keeping with the woodland theme, we decided to go with a forest motif for this mural. So once again I picked up my pencil, and went about designing what would soon become the modern version of Raphael's School of Athens. I could go into great detail about the planning, process, and decisions made, but I really don't feel like writing an essay right now. What I will say is that it is a huge honour to be a part of such a great school - the Montessori Academy is amazing.

(a big thank you to Rainbow Wong who helped with the painting - many long hours were spent making sure that each brush stroke was perfect)

planning, floorplan, construction...

sketches, ideas, details...

in progress, details...

paint, a paintbrush, and a beaver...

view of the main wall...

unfortunately the wall is so long that it is really hard to fit the entire mural in one photo, so here's a portion of it...

here's another portion of it...

this is a separate mural at the entrance of the school... 

the Woodland Montessori Academy from the outside...