Painting an Elementary School for a Retiring Principal
This retirement gift came with a bit of a math problem: how do you fit an extremely wide elementary school onto a 5×7 piece of watercolor paper without turning the actual building into a tiny little strip in the distance?
'Jenny did a fabulous job on the painting of our school for a principal who was retiring!" —Janine
Lillian G. Mason Elementary School in Grand Blanc, Michigan, has a very wide, modern architecture, so painting the entire front straight-on would have made the composition look… well, less than exciting. And you would've needed a magnifying glass to see it.
Instead, I suggested zooming in on the most interesting part of the building—the front entrance. It has some really cool architectural details, plus a couple of trees nearby that brought in some greenery and color. That gave the painting a much stronger composition while still capturing the character of the school.
The client also wanted the school’s name included, but there was definitely not enough room to squeeze it onto the building itself. So we put it underneath as a little caption instead, which ended up being the perfect finishing touch.
This was commissioned as a retirement gift for the principal, and I was especially happy to see the five-star Etsy review my client left afterward. Apparently, my miniature version of the school passed the test!
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