Glendale kids get creative with Big Draw L.A.
Five-year-old Angelina Vesselinov wants Glendale to have a pink hotel near a park where she plays hide-and-seek with her best friend.
So she drew one on construction paper and glued it onto a large piece of brown butcher paper rolled onto the stage at the Central Library’s auditorium. Angelina was part of a group of 25 people who helped create a mural showing off Glendale’s skyline and the people and buildings that make up the community.
The mural project is one of several events being hosted this month by Glendale’s Library, Arts and Culture Department as part of The Big Draw L.A., a local spin-off of a nationwide event in the month of October.
“It’s meant to encourage ordinary people to be creative and draw,” said art librarian Cathy Billings.
The mural also included a blue blimp, which some children though looked like a fish, a bus with a bee on it — a nod to the Beeline bus system — and the famed Alex Theatre, the historic landmark on Brand Boulevard.
Aviv Wilder, 6, added a palm tree with coconuts in front of the Alex. Kristin Donner, an animator at Nickelodeon who led the event, helped him glue down the tall, skinny tree, which tilted to the left.
“It’s perfect because some palm trees bend,” Aviv said, before he ran off to draw police and fire stations.
Donner, who works on the show “Fairly Oddparents,” said she loved the children’s creativity as they added to the mural.
“I like that they’re thinking very practically about the elements of the city,” she said with a chuckle before one child added a trash can and another pasted on a representation of R.D. White Elementary, complete with a flag on the top.
Then there was the large blue robot with “I Love Glendale” written across its chest on the mural. He was carrying his orange pet dog.
But the robot flying through the sky wasn’t drawn by a kid.
“My Glendale is filled with robots,” said Kyle Neswald, an animator who has worked for Disney and Nickelodeon, and the robot’s creator.
But 10-year-old Serapina Lee, who added a forest to the mural, which one day will hang in the library, countered that Glendale isn’t filled with robots.
“It’s filled with technology,” she said.
The next Big Draw L.A. events in Glendale will be:
•The Big Mini Comic Book Workshop, in which teens can learn how to make their own comic books, on Oct. 26 from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Central Library auditorium
•The Big Draw Now! featuring ongoing drawing activities at Central and Pacific Park libraries during library open hours on Oct. 22 and 30.
--
Follow Brittany Levine on Google+ and on Twitter: @brittanylevine.
ALSO:
Public safety instructor arrested for allegedly sexually assaulting teen student