Symmetrical and Bisymmetrical Art project

I'm starting this school year by teaching the Principles of Design. These are the ideas and beliefs guide us in our art-making, much like grammar is used to organize the parts of speech (nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc.) in written language, the principles of design are the way we organize the elements of of art (lines, shapes, colors, etc.) in art. We're communicating visually. Do we want to communicate a sense of stability and equalibrium? Then we'd better know ways to balance our composition. Do we want to communicate a sense of order and unity? Repeating an element to create a pattern might do the trick.

Why do we see to balance our lives? Our governments? our diets? Our budgets? More importantly, why would we want to balance those things?  Because everything works better and feels better when it's balanced.  

We made symmetrical balance by slowly laying paint-soaked string on one side of a paper and folding it over to print a mirrored image on the opposite side of the fold, or line of symmetry.

Some of these papers were folded both vertically and horizontally to create bilateral symmetry. And some were folded diagonally as well as vertically and horizontally (like a plus sign and multiplication sign in folds) to create radial symmetry.  

My students who are totally blind kept it simple and sprinkled sand onto wet paint to make tactile images. 

These don't take long, so we can cover multiple types of balance in a class period or two. It's nice for students to be able to learn the types of balance by creating them and within an hour have several visual examples of the definitions they're studying.

Word Mandala

Mandalas are repeated patterns using radial balance. They are used in some Indian religions and ancient architecture to symbolize the universe.

After my 12 year-old daughter came home with the painting above, I had my own students create mandalas. First I  folded a square of 12" X 12" paper in fourths to make 4- 4"X4" pieces and then diagonally to make 8 identical triangles. I cut them out and gave one to each student. They wrote a name or word that was meaningful to them. (My daughter's says "APPLES.") This can be done with the bottom of the word against the longest side of the triangle or one of the shorter sides, but the letters should fill the space. The word needs to be traced with marker so that it can be seen well enough to trace. We used a light table to trace the word into one section of paper and then flip upside down on the next section and trace it again.The flipping and tracing continued the entire way around the paper. Some people might want to do every other space with the word reading correctly, and then flip the word upside down and fill in the mirror images in the missing spaces. Either way, the results are the same: 4 mirrored pairs of the word.



For my students who are completely blind, and read Braille, instead of print, I wrote the word for them and traced it in hot glue. Their job was to color them using the tactile lines.

These two say "Kind" and "Faith." 

I wish I had taken pictures of the finished pieces because they looked fantastic. This project really helped students who felt like they couldn't come up with a pattern or design themselves, realize that they could. It also helped some of my students think about negative space, and find ways to repeat color for sense of wholeness.