In 2007 I revamped the Rainforest mural at Longlevens Junior School, with the help of Year 5.  Their reading assignment for the summer term was Kensuke's Kingdom, by Michael Morpurgo.  The idea was to adapt the rainforest mural to become part of a desert island in the south Pacific, the reclusive home of a Japanese Second World War veteran named Kensuke.  This meant painting over large parts of the mural to create a tropical island shoreline as seen from the fringes of the island jungle. 

 

There was ample opportunity to include some tall palm trees in this 15' high room!  The children helped me to paint in the vegetation and add various features, like animals, insects and butterflies.  The scene shows Michael, who is stranded on the island with his dog, trying to attract the attention of a passing ship:

 

This is an on-going project, so more detail has yet to be added.  The shoreline mural, as it looks so far,  is best seen on this short video:

 

As Michael tries to attract the attention of the ship, he angers the only inhabitant of the island, Kensuke.  I wanted to feature Kensuke on the mural, at the door of his makeshift dwelling.  there's some artistic licence here, because in the book his little house is part of a cave.  But it worked better for the mural to make it into a Japanese style hut. Kensuke himself is painted life-size.

 I've tried to capture not only his advancing age, but also his stern countenance.  He's actually painted onto the door to the Year 5 girl's toilet!  Not sure the girls were too impressed by that.  In the window to his hut you can see his shells which he paints each day, and eventually uses to teach art to Michael.  Quite fitting, really.