Trends Modern Art

If you've never heard of Andy Warhol, then you've been missing out on the one of the queerest, most avant garde, most groovy artists of the 60's. He believed that you could elevate something as mundane and common as a soup can and it could turn into something visually interesting. He began to experiment with silk screening, and his celebrity portraits--most notably, Marilyn Monroe--are some his most beloved works. I decided to have some fun with this project, and we embarked on our own Pop Art portrait.

This project requires some preparation beforehand. Before the students left class for the day, I had them line up against the wall one by one, and I took a black and white photo of them.

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  Then I copied and pasted them four times, to form a grid pattern.
• Once I have uploaded and cropped all of the images, I then proceeded to play with each individual portrait on photoshop, upping the contrast and then posterizing them, giving them a paint by numbers quality.
• After printing each one, I got to serious work.
• Each printed portrait now has to be decoupaged onto a piece of watercolor paper. Decoupage is basically a gluing technique.
• I use Matte Medium for all my collage/decoupage projects.
• Decoupaging will prepare the surface and will give it a matte finish.
• It's up to you, whether or not you want your students to decoupage on their own. Since I have a time crunch, I decided to do it at home beforehand. I also couldn't bear the thought of the students sloshing their way through my beloved bottle of Liquitex Matte Medium, which costs me $19.99!
• That afternoon before class, everyone had their black and white portrait of themselves primed and ready to go!
• Encourage each student to be creative within each grid, using contrasting colors and patterns but following the basic posterized shapes.
• Each student was given a palette with 4-5 colors of acrylic paint in each well. Make sure each student has their own water container as well, it just makes it easier for each student to keep their brushes clean and their paint from getting too muddy.

This is one of my favorite projects because this is a technique that I employ in alot of my personal mixed medium paintings. You would not believe some of the stuff the students came up with! Although it involves a good deal of preparation, the results are worth it! Every student was excited to take their portraits home. And for once, this was a keeper!

The portrait above was created by a seventh grader.

My posting will be a little bit slow during the holiday season, since we are on vacation and we haven't done any new projects. But after the first of the year, this place should be bumpin' again. Until then, I leave you with this, an oil pastel Modigliani self-portrait that one of my junior high students created. I love when I have a student in class that shows so much promise. He really gets it.

Projects like these make it really fun to be an art teacher!

Last week I decided to share my love (read: obsession) of Frida Kahlo and her self-portraits. On a recent trip to San Francisco to see a large collection of her work at sfmoma, I realized just why she painted so many portraits. It wasn't because she thought she was beautiful or interesting. She painted bowls of fruit or portraits of other people to make money to pay for her mounting doctor bills. She assumed people would not care to pay for her intensely personal paintings. During the times after her many surgeries and when her body was giving way, she was confined to her bed. That was where she painted self-portraits to the point where she perfected her own face.

I wanted to teach the students how powerful color could be to convey emotion. So we embarked on a self-portrait project, splitting the portrait down the middle. One side is their happy, "crazy" side with warm, bright colors. The other is calm, serene side with cool colors.

• Make sure students have a 9 X 12 piece of white paper and a pencil.
• Pass out circle templates and instruct them to draw their own heads. I've found that making them use templates keeps them away from drawing little pinheads.
• Once they have drawn their features, have them draw a line down the center.
• Some of the kids got confused as to what was a cool color and what was a warm color but I think they understood the overall principle.
• We fun with this project. I know I did because I got to talk about Frida Kahlo!

The artwork above was created by a 5th grader.