Colorgraphy

DRE and FLEO recently cooked up this mural in downtown Montreal on St-Catherine and Pierce street. Maybe you noticed the colourful typography or the clever black & white transition, but there is a bigger story behind the piece...

Put in place by Innovation Jeunes, the mural is just one part of a bigger project involving many different workshops and activities that were presented during their month long street festival. With music shows, arts & crafts and urban farming as part of the program, Innovation Jeunes really pulled off an awesome event for downtown youth as well as creating a fun environment for the whole community. We are very proud to have been part of the project with our particular twist on urban arts. 

For the creation of the artwork, we first met with the youths for a brainstorm session in order for them find an artistic direction for the project. After throwing around tons of cool ideas, they decided to go for an animal theme, using different seasons and decorations for each animal chosen. They then formed teams of two to create a wolf, fox, polar bear, lion, cat and two birds. While they worked on their animals, our artists created their own character in the form of a wise old owl. Using our creative process and technique as an example we then showed them a few tricks of the trade, such as proportions, expressions and color mixing. 

Each of their beautiful pieces was then painted in public during one of the festival days. The artwork will be fixed on urban farming flower pots that will be in use next to the mural we painted. It was really fun to see all their great ideas and the passion that they put into each of their animals portraits. We love to collaborate with the community and create some life and color on our streets for everyone to enjoy.

Extra special thanks to Innovation Jeunes for making this awesome project come to life, and to all the talented young artists who were involved.