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.

Symmetrical Balance Art Lesson for Kids

I love balance: balance in my art and balance in my life! I love my diet, my body, and my checkbook to be balanced. My college art department's favorite film was "Koyaanisqatsi" (1982), which is the Hopi word for "life out of balance." Its music and images taught me, as a young woman, that when things get out of balance, tragedy follows, therefore, balance is a worthy goal. Our first art class unit for the school year was one on types of visual balance, starting with symmetry.

For some, I started my balance discussion at a very basic level. We placed items into both sides of a balance scale and arranged matching magnets on either side of a tape line of symmetry on a magnetic board.  "This side has 2 squares and a circle. This side has only 2 squares. That's not fair. How can we make it the same on both sides?" I would ask.

I had non-verbal children point to their ears and their eyes, using two hands, to reinforce the idea that both sides of our body look the same. I walked them through the task of creating visual balance. 

Finally, I put a tape line of symmetry on the table and let students squirt matching shaving cream shapes on either side. Then I smooth out the cream and show them how to use their finger to draw matching marks on either side of the line to create symmetry.

My older students could discuss why a balanced government is important and what a balanced breakfast might look like, but most of them wanted to play with shaving cream too. Their culminating assignment was to replicate the mirror image of half their face to create a symmetrical whole. For those who couldn't see, I used hot glue on the photo image of half their face. They replicated it in Wiki Stix, and I helped them match their skin tones using their choice of crayon, marker, colored pencil, or pastels. It was a useful exercise to reinforce the art principle of balance.

I took the left over half faces to combine, for  funky, albeit disturbing, combo portraits. This was used, not only to get a laugh out of my class, but to illustrate the concept of proximate symmetry. Yes, there is an eyebrow and an eye and an ear on each side of the line of symmetry, but they're not exactly the same.