The Me to We Group at Heritage Glen helped paint the Husky sculpture.  There were typically six of us painting at a time: two with white, two with blue, one with green and one with black.  It was challenging to not lean in each other's paint while wet.  The girls with long hair had an extra challenge of holding their hair with one hand while leaning over the sculpture to see properly while painting with the other hand.  

At one point I tried painting the black letters but my hand was too shaky to make clean straight lines.  Lucky for me the students had steady hands and could do it expertly.

To speed up the process we set up a fan to blow across the paint and speed up the drying.  As a bonus it helped disperse the acrylic paint aroma.

The painting started around 11:30 and I made the final brush stroke around 5:00.  Fortunately we were able to apply multiple coats to create vibrant colours.

I attached a base to the sculpture to make it stand up vertically and went to take a picture of the final creation but the camera's battery was dead.  I will have to wait for the unveiling to take the final photo.  Many wonderful pictures of the event were taken and I would like to post them but schools have privacy rules so I will have to settle for a single picture with lots of hands and brushes but no faces.

My daughter Sondra inspired this public sculpture by inviting me to create it with the grade four students at her school, Heritage Glen in Oakville.  We met with her principal, Brent and VP Janet to brainstorm ideas and decided to create a relief of the school logo and make it about a metre in diameter and 10 cm thick.  It would look like a giant coin protected by a display case and for added dynamics would be painted.

It's difficult to see the proposal in this sketch due to the light lead in the pencil.  Lesson learned.  Future sketches should be made with dark lead or ink.

I have never painted a sculpture before but recall how often children asked about it when building the Paper Bag Princess sculpture.  This was an ideal opportunity to give it a try.

We all know that huskies are coloured grey and white... or is that black and grey and white?  And we all know that the face is white and the back is dark but exactly where is the transition?  To learn about a husky's appearance I decided to paint an acrylic picture of one using a YouTube video as teacher.

I found a sheet of plywood in inventory and cut it to 4' by 4' then drew a one metre circle on it.  This was the template that I laid a sheet of wire mesh on.  To convert the wire mesh shape from square to round I cut radial lines from the outside edges in to the circle then bent the strips of wire mesh in towards the centre.  Using strips of wire, I attached two threaded rods to it that would eventually be bolted to a wood base.  When I took a picture of the mesh I was surprised to see that the bent in wire strips had created a clover shape. Interesting!

Sondra took care of organizing the event with the other grade four teachers at Heritage Glen.  We set up a work area in the back of her classroom and had the children stop by in groups of four or five to each mix a cup of Winterstone clay and apply it to the sculpture.  In total we had about 60 children participating. 

Six senior students were my assistants during the event, helping grade fours mix and apply the clay so that I could focus on the sculpture's growing shape.  I could not have done it without them.  Many thanks!

By the end of the day the sculpture was supposed to be complete except for minor touch ups.  But there was one problem.  Actually it was a very big problem.  The display case that would eventually hold the sculpture limited how wide the sculpture could be.  This limited how long the husky's nose could be.  To all of our dismay we discovered that a husky with a short nose looked a lot like a pig.

I took the sculpture home and decided to change the direction that the husky was looking.  To show it's long nose the husky had to face sideways.  I used my Dremmel tool to cut off the pig like features so that I could turn the head sideways.  This necessitated that I remove the nose, ears and under the neck.

I shaped a wire mesh nose and attached it to the sculpture using Winterstone clay then did the same for one ear.  Each day I applied a cup or two of clay where needed until the husky shape was complete. 

We scheduled a day for the We to Me Group at Heritage Glen to paint the sculpture but I wanted to make sure that it would be successful.  I made a small disc of Winterstone covered wire mesh for test painting.  I wanted to make sure that the acrylic paint I bought would adhere properly and that my colour scheme worked.