Transfer Drawing Portraits

I have loved making transfer drawings for decades, since I discovered Paul Klee and his art. I like to use a breyer and relief ink to create a tacky surface on paper, which I then flip, ink side down onto my artwork. I draw onto the back of the inky paper, to transfer the drawing onto the final surface. It works like carbon sheets, but it has a lovely speckled texture and ephemeral aesthetic. I didn't have any relief ink, but I had some oil paint and I thought I could paint that on a surface to create a similar affect.Above are my first two attempts at this process, as I took a planning period to figure out the process to teach my students.

Instead of having students pick something to draw, I printed out pictures of them, a family member, or celebrity. This took the subject mostly out of the equation. We were staying in our "Portrait Unit" perimeter, but focused more on media and process then anatomy.

student self portrait

Most of the drawings were hidden in the dark mass of transfered brush strokes. It looked like the project was going to have to be trashed, but I realized that edges could be defined and harsh lines softened by using oil pastel. 

Painting a piece of paper to transfer, left bits of paper sticking to the final product. Likewise, using scrapbook or decorative paper for the base was also problematic as it would tear as we pulled the tacky paint off. Ultimately painting on a piece of laminating plastic and transferring to wall paper samples worked best.

I love the distressed, unfinished look with the vintage wall paper patterns peeking through. It's just another tool in the box of how to make an image.

 

Monochromatic Mobiles

I have a goal to make my life as beautiful, uncomplicated, and perfectly balanced as a Alexander Calder mobile.

I taught my students about Calder and mobiles as a way to unite the shape and line themes we'd been learning in art class. I also wanted to add "monochrome" to their list of color theory vocabulary terms. Each student created shapes of various sizes from paper, cardboard, or whatever they wanted. Then they chose a color, which they could mix with either white to tint it, or black to shade it.

The younger students worked collaboratively, painting tints and shades of a chosen color on cards, and later gluing the cards to strings. Although the installation as a whole isn't monochromatic, I think they still learned how to create multiple values from one color by working on their part.

Art Projects for the Little Ones

My students this year have ages ranging from 5 to 20. They're all blind or visually impaired and many have multiple disabilities, so my creative exercise each day is figuring out how to teach each individual child something about art that they didn't know before. I try to keep similar units and themes, whether the classes are elementary, middle school, or high school level, just to help have visual reinforcement of those concepts in my room. Our first month back at school this year was shape month, and our second month is centered on line. This post centers on shape and line assignments for the youngest of my students.

Matisse Collage

This assignment gave me a chance to tell stories about the life of Henri Matisse and explain the concept of "painting with scissors."  Students were told to use geometric shapes in the background and organic shapes in the foreground. I love explaining things in pairs of opposites: geometric and organic, background and foreground. For the children who were able to use modified scissors, they were encouraged to create their own shapes, but I had piles of pre-cut shapes for the ones who aren't to that point.

Watercolor Resist Still Life

We used the design element of shape to talk about how to depict still life objects. This time the medium was oil pastel and watercolor. This student used circles to create a bowl of apples.

Stamping Animal Shapes
For this assignment we used repetition of shapes to create unity. It was fun passing sponges around and having students guess the animal shape of each.

Barnett Newman Line Painting

In case you hadn't heard, a Newman painting of a blue line, entitled Onement VI, sold for almost $44 million at a Sotheby's auction last year. That piece of news was a fun way to discuss the value of line and introduce minimalism to first and second graders.  Rubber bands stretched around paper and cardboard acted as stencils for students to create their own straight line paintings. It wasn't my favorite project, but it has potential so I may try it again one year with modifications.

Yarn Drawings
While the older students were doing their string art, by stretching it across boards or sewing it through holes, the younger students were using glue and yarn collage to create drawings.

Cross Contour Lesson

Here is another assignment I used for Line Month. Cross contour drawings are a great way of showing dimension through line. We spent several days of class trying to find ways to draw lines on top of appropriated famous (and a few not so famous) portraits to give them a greater sense of depth.

The student who did the piece on the left was completely blind but you can see where I hot glued around the nose, eyes, mouth etc. so he would know when to stop with a certain color. 

Students were also required to do a cross contour drawing without a starting image. One visually impaired student tackled hands doing a pinky promise in cross contour.

 Wiki stick shapes were formed by this blind students who would draw lines with rulers outside the shapes and made curves inside the shapes to create their cross contour drawings.