“It’s a good thing to be a good starter, but it’s a better thing to be a good finisher,” Brian Major says as he brushes in the final details on a line of river rocks. He was talking to Megan Winter and Delaney Bullinger, two Mount Si High School seniors who were actively being good finishers, cleaning their painting supplies as they wrapped up work on the 25-by 14-foot mural they’d been working on this sunny Saturday, June 4.

“We’ll be back tomorrow,” they promised, as they helped close and pack up paints. It was a little after 4 p.m., and before long, the trees surrounding Fall City’s Art Park, on the corner of 335th and Redmond-Fall City Road, would cast long shadows on the mural, making it difficult to paint.

The student artists are part of the Mount Si High School Art Club’s latest project, creating a new mural in the park in time for Fall City Days. About a dozen students have been working with Major, a regular art contributor to the Fall City Days festival to design and build the mural in semi-monthly after-school meetings in Bryce Meserve’s art classroom for the past few months.

“It was easy to prepare lessons for those kids,” said Major, adding that they “were all there because they wanted to be.”

He discussed pattern making, how to plan and design a mural, and demonstrated “pouncing,” the technique of transferring a design from paper to another object by making pinpricks along the lines in the paper design, and then tapping them with chalk while it’s on the target object. He also asked the students what they wanted to create.

“We talked about different things, like oh, we should really make sure we have the mountains and the river in it,” said Winter, who regularly attended the art club meetings. “We all drew up a couple of ideas, too.”

“I wanted to design the mural to create a great level of success for each participant,” Major explained.

Using their concepts, he created a landscape featuring mountains, the river, “and Snoqualmie Falls is going to be right in the middle of it,” said Diane Major, Brian’s wife and business partner.

The students voted to name the scene “Enjoy the Day,” and although Major is doing most of the painting himself to finish on time, some, like Winter, have also been helping to paint it in their free time.

They’ve also recruited their friends. “I’m not really an artist, I’m just helping,” says Bullinger, outlining a rock. “I’m going to be singing in college.”

“That’s still art, just a different kind of art,” responded Winter, who plans to study graphic design and interior design at Central next year.

The painting will be unveiled and dedicated at 1 p.m. Saturday, June 18, during Fall City Days. A few steps away, the mural will be reproduced again. “I’m going to do a color-by-numbers design identical to the mural on the sidewalk, for the kids, and the adults if they want to, to fill in,” Major said.

He’s quite happy with how the project has turned out, overall. His only disappointment is that a butterfly featured in the previous mural was accidentally painted over. He’d hoped it would be saved, just as he hopes the next mural will preserve a bit of this one.

“I guarantee it’s something they’ll be thinking about for some time.”