BY CHRISTINE WOLFF
The Cincinnati Enquirer
MONTGOMERY -- Paint strokes of pig pink, cheese-coney yellow and mint chocolate-chip green turned the white sides of Metro bus No. 556 Tuesday into art on wheels.
There will be no mistaking this bus when it's again highway-bound, clad in a new acrylic paint job celebrating good things about Greater Cincinnati. The murals featuring Cincinnati scenes and signatures commemorate Metro's 25th anniversary.
The artists: 54 Sycamore Junior High School eighth-graders, who are painting the bus as an advanced-art class project.
"The bus is the end product, the grand finale," said art teacher Carole Ritchie. "The whole process is important -- the critical thinking, the problem solving," that created the design.
Tuesday morning, the bus -- freshly painted white by Metro crews -- arrived at Sycamore Junior High. Students swarmed around it, using yardsticks and free-hand to turn their small, paper drawings into bus-sized sketches. Several versions of winged pigs, Union Terminal, the Roebling Suspension Bridge, cheese coneys and the downtown skyline took shape.
Before starting to apply color, students gathered at the bus' rear for advice from Chris Payne, a professional illustrator from Evendale whose work has appeared on the covers of Time and Rolling Stone.
Be patient with each other, he told them, and work as a unit. Remember the importance of using shadows to give an object shape. Blend colors; shadows come in blacks, grays and dark blues. Sky, ground and skin tones need layering, too.
Students swarmed again, and the bus slowly turned colorful. In shades of green from Drew Suszko's brush, the woman atop the Tyler Davidson Fountain appeared. Leah Del Mauro created a galloping pink, red and white pig. Stephanie Barasch blended paint to create her favorite mint flavor for two ice-cream cones.
Elise Allen used her finger to blend gray, green and white paint for the ribs of Cinergy Field.
Brandi Walker paused as she layered light blue over dark around a piece of skyline. "Wait -- is this sky or is it a hill?," she wondered. "What I'm seeing right now," Mr. Payne said, standing back and watching, "is a combination of a lot of students' ideas, rather than one student's vision."
He planned to observe only, but soon the art supplies beckoned. He quickly sketched a bus driver's portrait near the door.
The face's model: Sycamore Junior High's red-haired principal, Kevin Boys.
The student-painted bus is a first for Metro, said Sallie Hilvers, Metro's director of public affairs. Metro's Paul Jablonski -- the system's general manager whose daughter Jenny attends Sycamore Junior -- helped arrange the bus painting.
"We're excited," Ms. Hilvers said. "We hope to find ways to showcase this bus in this (Montgomery-Blue Ash) area."
For the student artists, the bus will be their most public work so far.
"We didn't think we actually could do it. We've never done anything this big before," said Elise. "This is awesome. Not many people get to do this."
