positive portraits.

This past week the 1st and 4th graders were working with people- from a distance and up close. Both grades were also practicing their painting techniques- application and care of their tools.

The 4th graders looked at a few paintings by San Diego's own, Kadir Nelson. We looked at how he captured movement through the positioning of the bodies in his scenes and we talked about proportion too. I broke out a couple of my small mannequins and modeled the movement of a couple of the athletes in Kadir's work. Some classes did playground basketball images, while others did wall ball scenes.

My kids and I did some early morning motion studies to serve as inspiration for the wall ball paintings.

We started the project by drawing out the hoop or wall ball wall. Then we drew the characters in the work. We broke them down into simpler geometric shapes- ovals, circles, trapezoids, and pentagons. We talked about the lengths of parts against each other an the whole figure as we drew. I asked students to draw at least 3 figures. 3d space was created through size changes in the figures.

We filled the figures in with a black crayon to emphasize their positive shape and position against the soon to be painted setting. 

When we painted, we tried to make colors lighter or darker with more or less water. I also stressed cleaning their brushes well between colors and not tapping their wet brushes on the cups of water they were sharing with others.

The 1st graders looked at the work of Oakland based artist, Favianna Rodriguez, as inspiration for their painting. We talked about portraits as pictures of people and found numerous examples around my classroom. We noticed that not all portraits look the same and that people look different if you see them from the front as compared to the side. 

We talked about how Favianna often uses Monarch butterflies in her work as a positive symbol for migration of people. As a school in San Diego, we have many students with families in Mexico and as a school with a very diverse population, we have students with families in many other countries as well. I briefly talked about how Favianna's work celebrates the contributions of immigrants to our country.

I started the week doing a oil pastel resist painting, based on the first butterfly image. Many students struggled mightily with the symmetrical nature of the drawing. Because of that, I changed focus images to the second one above. This was much more manageable for the kids. Once we drew the portrait and traced the pencil lines with crayons, we painted. Again, trying to create light and darks by adjusting the amount of water used with the paint.

kadir.

Kadir Nelson.
He has an incredible command of human anatomy and and renders it in a way that emphasizes his subject's persona. Kadir has illustrated and written the book We Are the Ship and he has illustrated many others. He lives and works in San Diego, which is cool for our students to see.
He works primarily in oils but the students used chalk pastels to achieve the intensity in color that Kadir displays. The pastels also offer students flexibility in blending colors and correcting mistakes that some other mediums do not.

When we look at his work I emphasize that one of the things that makes his figures look so real is his use  of light and dark colors to show the volume of the figures and where the light is coming from. He doesn't necessarily use shades of colors to create shadows. He more often uses dark colors to define these areas. There is often a contrast between warm areas of light and cool areas of shadow.
One of the other elements that makes Kadir's work realistic is his use of implied lines along the edges of shapes. He may outline shapes when mapping out his compositions, but these outlines are not present in the final work. People do not walk around with black outlines around our bodies, so he does not paint them that way. This concept is often difficult for students to execute or get the hang of, so you need to make sure that you emphasize it during the introduction to Kadir's work and while they are working on their own projects.

For this lesson I provide students with black and white reproductions of Kadir's work and they may copy one of those images onto a 12 x 18" sheet of colored paper, or they may come up with their own figure composition. They may also alter his images, like changing the type of clothes, direction of the lighting, or the gender of the subject.

1. with white pastel draw out the composition lightly with contour line
2. very lightly outline edges where light areas meet shadow areas
3. add dark colors to the shadow areas in the drawing
4. add light colors to the light areas
5. gently blend those areas to create a smooth texture on the figure. you can blend where the light and dark meet to create a transition between the two, so the lighting won't seem so drastic
6. add color to the background elements, using light and dark colors accordingly to make shapes seem 3d, but treat these shapes more simply than the figure, so the background doesn't compete too much with your focal point
7. when complete, spray drawing with hairspray or fixative. if stacking drawings, you may want to put tracing paper in between to minimize colors transferring from the back of one piece onto the front of another