May 27th, A Wolf for Winona!

SO... it's been a pretty busy day!  We came up to Detroit Lakes yesterday eve, leaving right from school just after lunch.  I drove with two fellow teachers and Fred, our brave driver, drove all six of our students up.  We got to White Earth at about 5, in time for dinner, and I was able to trace out this mural around 9 as the sun was setting-  I had a projector along and knew we wanted to include the thunderbird design in the center, though the wall was wider than we'd expected, so I went ahead and got that started figuring we could figure the rest out in the morning.  And Winona LaDuke, whose wall it was, asked for a couple wolves too.
SO I sat up last night looking through photos of wolves in my photo library, and found a number I liked and made a few small paintings to see what worked.  In the morning, I looked some more and painted a couple more, including a bear, because I thought, heck!  Why not a wolf AND a bear? Since I've been painting so many bears lately!

SO this photo shows the Honor The Earth shirt, designed by Sue of LittleRedFeatherDesign (follow the link to get your own!) with my two paintings, which led to the beginning of the big picture!

We started by painting in the black- I outlined my design ideas first-

We decided to connect the animals to the water and have water under and around them... with heart lines like the heart of the thunderbird-

And the final touch was to add the dragonflies up on each side flying out of the scene as messengers~

What an incredible opportunity~  I am so proud of all of us for getting this done today!

And now I am pooped~

Good night!

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