Introducing the designers: Valeriia
While the Shelters project team is working on creating murals in two shelters at once – in kindergartens in Mykulychi village (“Yalynka”) and Druzhnia village (“Strumochok”), we continue to tell you about those who turned our ideas and selected themes into finished mural sketches.
The first room that the volunteers of our project Reconstruction in the Strumochok kindergarten bomb shelter started working on was a large hall, which we called “Energy”. As soon as all the leveling and painting work was completed, the volunteers of the Shelters started their tasks here.
Druzhnia village
To create the murals for this and other rooms of the shelter, we engaged (not for the first time!) graduates of the Ampli teen accelerator. Earlier, we told you about the talented artists Anna and Alina who created the drawings for the shelter in Mykulychi and 3 rooms in Druzhnia. The young designers have the opportunity not only to practice their skills and acquired knowledge, but also to help us turn gloomy basements into cozy and pleasant shelters for young children.
The designer who added her creative energy to our project was Valeriia Kravets!
Valeriia was tasked with creating designs for the murals that will decorate the walls of the large “Energy” hall in Druzhnia. This hall has a non-standard shape and layout: most of the room is complemented by a small niche. Volunteers of the Reconstruction project separated the niche with a small partition to visually separate it from the main hall. This niche will be used as a sleeping and play area for preschoolers, and the walls will be decorated with Valeriia’s first energetic mural.
The heroes of the mural are friendly animals that will teach preschoolers various interesting and energetic outdoor activities, inspiring them and showing them that they can do anything!
A large mural will decorate 3 walls, with an emphasis on the central wall of 6 meters. Thus, the children’s play area and beds will be placed in a three-dimensional space, surrounding the kids with a fairy-tale world.
Work on it is almost complete!
According to Valeriia, as a fan of details and layering in a painting, she found the task interesting, where the main thing is the comfort of applying the drawing to the wall. Our volunteers and artwork coordinator Polina used a projector to transfer the sketch to the wall and apply paint layer by layer.
The second mural will also decorate three walls, but in the common area of the hall. This hall will be used not only as a bomb shelter, but also as an area for activities during air raids, so we will decorate it with voluminous energetic abstract drawings. We hope that they will complement games, dances, and sports activities for kids, and not only during air raids, as the kindergarten will have an effective additional hall for games, competitions, and additional classes.
Valeriia’s abstract and voluminous mural with many shapes and details will decorate more than 60 square meters of the walls of the ‘Energy’ hall! It will be our largest mural to date.
In the meantime, using the example of Valeriia’s first mural in the “Energy” hall, we show how our volunteers create drawings in kids’ shelters, step by step turning empty walls into bright worlds, each one unique and special!
The designer notes that any practice does a lot for the growth of skills, and this assignment helped her get out of her comfort zone, and working on the wall with abstraction also helped her develop her imagination.
It’s nice to do something for the country. I have to help as much as I can, so I am glad to have this opportunity to make our children’s lives a little brighter at this time.
I wanted to create something bright, but not too flashy, diverse, and decorated with a common theme. Something that could be viewed in an interesting way, distracting from the situation that unfortunately forced the children to be in a bomb shelter.
I took inspiration from books, drawings and topics that were interesting to me as a child. I think I’m not the only child who dreamed of surfing, climbing rocks and flying hang gliding. So I am sure that this mural will find its connoisseur!
Valeriia Kravets
We are grateful to our designers for their unique drawings and the time they spent creating these outstanding sketches. The work on these murals is ongoing and we will be able to show you the finished result soon!