Portrait Perfect

One of my art professors told me, "If you can't make it good, make it big." Scale gives some legitimacy to art. Claus Oldenburg's spoon with a cherry, would be far less impressive if it were life size. It's the making it bigger than life that makes it spectacular. Adding a fountain element to the cherry stem is the over-the-top silliness that sells it to even anti-Pop Art grumps. I decided to give my students a larger-than-life self-portrait assignment, and ended up with some really happy results.

I teach proportions by having students draw a line of symmetry, and find the vertical placement of the eyes on that line. One student kept those preliminary lines, and I love it. This portrait (left) reminds me of Paul Klee.

Because the student, whose paintings are below, has no vision, I would move his hand in the shape the head, four or five times before giving him a brush and having him do it independently, based on muscle memory. Or I would hold his hand over a painted eye and say, the eyebrow goes here, and he'd paint it. I loved these so much that I had him do the assignment four times! Each time, I cut a construction paper head and neck to match his shape, and tape it to his painting, so he could paint the background without any worries of covering the figure. 

 The student, whose work is shown below was so excited about his image that he decided that he and I should publish a picture book of just this one image. "We'll be rich!" he insisted. He just started art this semester. Fingers crossed that the enthusiasm lasts.

A few students drew in pencil, but could not see their lines, so I traced them in black paint, and that was bold enough to help them paint the shapes.

This portrait was done by a cognitively impaired student who is completely blind. I positioned the his  hand and told him what part of the face belonged at that spot. I traced the marker lines with hot glue for watercolor boundaries (the acrylic would have covered the lines). Then I covered the portrait and the student used a stencil and colored pencil to add pattern to the background. It feels simultaneously ephemeral and playful to me.

My advanced students could choose their own medium. This one chose to work in pencil,

and this one used marker and pastel. 

When I look back on an assignment, I can tell if it's a good one or not by how broad the range is in terms of style and interpretation. Everyone definitely was able to show off their skills and reveal their unique style and preferences. Plus they were forced to be bold, by working large. I'll be using this lesson again in the future.

Christmas Set Design

My students, all of whom are visually impaired or blind, have an Expanded Core Curriculum (ECC) added to their academic curriculum. One of the nine areas of the ECC is Career Exploration. For the last two months of Friday mornings, I have been able to teach set design as a possible career. Some students worked with another teacher learning to build panels. Each of these panels was built from 3-8 foot 2X4s: one for each side and one cut in half for the top and the bottom. A  4ftX8ft birch panel was nailed to the front and back of the frame. Then 2X4 scraps were used to built a stand at the bottom with 4 coasters on each to move with ease. This gave my class 4 large panels, with two sides each to use as a canvas for our images.

The chorus teacher wanted to use the panels in our upcoming winter concert and requested an outdoor snow scene and indoor Christmas scene. As a class we researched source material on the internet and decided the best parts of each image to incorporate into our own images. I drew the final scene which they copied onto a piece of overhead plastic and then we projected it onto the panels and traced them. 

Because my students are visually impaired, I had them paint mostly the large, flat areas of color. 

They did stones for the fireplace. No one noticed any imperfections from the audience.

And tape works well to keep students in the lines. Any mistakes were fixable since I kept enough paint mixed to go back over stray marks.

There wasn't enough time in our brief Friday classes to finish, so some of my regular art students pitched in during the week.

Trees and wreathes had a black underpainting to give richness and shadows to the forms.

Then we added details such as green branches topped with snow. Candles, berries, stockings and fire in the fireplace. It was fun feeling like we were having art inside a toasty home decked with holly, or out in a snowy landscape. But the ultimate pay off was seeing a performance brought to life through quality sets. I am so glad my students had the luxury of working on such a large scale and know they will never forget the experience.