Kehinde Wiley Art Project for the Blind

Visually Impaired Middle and High School Students' attempt at portraits in Wiley's style

Kehinde Wiley is one of the great portrait artists of a generation. He takes every day people and elevates them to classical aristocracy of the 18th century. He draws inspiration from Ingres and Jaque-Louis David, and their work. 

The first Wiley paintings I saw was in Detroit

His subjects are graceful and commanding, but they share the viewers attention with the pattern that fills the background. In fact, sometime's the pattern competes to the point that it creeps into the foreground. Even the presidential portrait of Barrack Obama has the leafy background come forward to cover some of Obama's legs. Studying Wiley is a great way to teach students about negative space,  figure-ground relationships, activating the background, and creating figure-ground confusion. These can be tricky concepts even for people with vision, but it's an extra challenge for my students who are are working with little to no vision.

Students started with a drawing of a person. Some used waxy-strings for their drawing to make it tactile.

I traced the Wiki-Stix with hot glue to make a more permanent way to feel where the lines are. Then they painted the background. Some low-vision students asked that I trace the lines with paint so they could see the shapes better and stay in the lines.

Once the background was dry, students picked out a stencil or two and a color of spray paint. They would decide how to space the stencils and then came the magic of activating the background. The figures were then painted in the foreground with as much value as each student could figure out. 

I used painter's tape or paper stencils to help protect the background for some students. A big part of my job is providing accommodations for each child to work as independently as possible.

Bits of pattern coming to the foregroun

The final part of the project was making the back ground a little more busy: adding colors and shapes so that it held more visual weight than simple wall paper. And of course, students had to find a way to bring some of that pattern in front of the figure. Most students used paint pens to add more colors and complexity. I offered simple stencils for those who needed help making pattern by hand.The students were all very happy with the added pizzaz the pattern brought to their paintings and I think they have more respect for Kehinde Wiley's style and message as a result.

Portrait Painting and Back Ground Activiating

I have been wanting to teach my students how to draw a well proportioned face (from scratch) all year. I mentioned last month that working from photographs or projections was OK, but I'm not going to deny them the skills to work from home with nothing but a sketchbook and pencil. Teaching drawing is my job.
So we start with an oval. Draw a line of symmetry and find the center of that line. We make the line go from one side of the face to the other. The eyes (contrary to popular belief) are in the middle of your head. We divide the horizontal line into fifths with 4 dots and then create a slight arch for an eyelid between the 1st and 2nd dot and the 3rd and 4th dot. The iris of the eye is a perfect circle but you can rarely see the whole thing at once, so I tuck it under the eyelid by making almost a U shape. The pupil is centered on the iris.

The lower half the the line of symmetry is divided in half again. The bottom of the nose is drawn 1/4th of the way from the bottom of the face. It is as wide as one eye, which is also the size of the space between the eye, so use that for a guideline. Of course people have wider and more narrow, longer and shorter noses, but we are just learning the average as a starting point.
The lower 4th of the line of symmetry is divided in half again so that the mouth is 1/8th of the way up from the bottom of the line. It is about 2 eyes wide, so it would go from the center of one eye to the center of the other eye.  The ears are drawn from the the eye height down to the nose position on the side of the head.  It's so funny that people who have looked at millions of faces over the days and years of their lives don't realize that your ears line up with your eyes. And some of them wear glasses.

After my students drawn their faces in pencil or wiki sticks, they paint their back ground color. Then they find or make stencils that they can use to spray paint pattern onto the background. We talk about figure-ground relationships and how important it is to activate the background if you want to add interest.

Everything is painted on the figure and then black paint lines are added to most of the drawings. This flattens the people into almost cartoon characters, but it also covers up all the rough edges and makes it look clean and finished. Plus it is easier for my low vision students to see each others work from a few feet away.