Each year for RUMPUS, students from each house design a banner to represent the houses’ themes for the year. Using paintbrushes and bedsheets, these students brought their themes to life.
The RUMPUS banners have many designs, courtesy of the different themes and minds behind them. They all started as plans, commonly made digitally, by the banner’s designer.
“I put the design together on my iPad, which took probably a day or two,” senior Jack Bell said, “and then some of the leaders and I worked on the banner on MLK weekend on Sunday in the lower school maker space.”
After a design is finalized and decided upon, it is then transferred to the actual canvas. There were two ways of doing this that were used by the houses.
The first method was freehanding the outline and then adding detail, as used by Regester house.
“[We’d] see how we wanted it to look and then I just free-handed it on a bedsheet,” senior Alex Tran said. “Everyone in the dorm helps paint so it’s very good.”
The second method was to project the digital image onto the bedsheet to aid in tracing the design, as utilized by Neville house.
“[I] Hung a bedsheet up on the green wall in the maker space, [then I] projected the image onto the wall, traced the image, and painted,” said Bell.
Then the banners would be hung in the Van Es during RUMPUS to represent the houses and their themes, showcasing the creative design and craftsmanship of the house’s students. The banners would be worked on by an average of one to two dozen people.
“We worked really hard to make it clean and pleasing to the eye,” said Bell, ”We really enjoyed [it].”