Self Portraits with Frida and the Scouts

I've been lucky enough to have worked with several Boy Scout and Girl Scout troupes in the past couple years. I've done a variety of programs with them but lately I've been helping several Girl Scout troupes earn their painting badges. Perhaps helping is probably the wrong word. I would have to say it was more like Guiding. These girls could clearly all draw and paint. My job was really to find a fun way for them earn a badge and perhaps give them a new way to look at themselves.

In an hour.  After pledges and snack. Easy? With THESE bright talented girls it was beyond easy!

• Introduce them to Frida Khalo's self-portraits.
• Give them all mirrors.
• Talk to them about really looking at themselves: have them inspect the real shape of their heads. Are their eyes really dots or circles or perhaps more almond shaped? 
• Ask them to think about composition: is their head in the middle of the page the only way to go? 
• How about colors? Skin is not one flat color. Hair usually has different shades and tones in it. How can their artwork reflect that?

And more. Keep them looking. Keep them thinking. Lots to think about in under an hour. 

You might notice that these aren't your usual paintings. Because I never know what the setup will be in the various locations I often avoid actual paint with these projects. So here we worked with oil pastels and a medium that would help them use them in a painterly manner: BABY OIL! That's right, the entire room smelled like the beach in the 1980's.  (Some of you might remember those days. The days before we were told about sun damage and baby oil was our choice of tanning lotion.) But I digress...

Did I mention that they had to add the stuffed animal of their choice? Who better to accompany them to their meeting!

Excellent work, girls!

Negative Spaces

 When you go to art school the teachers really like talking about negative space. It's a biggie. And rightly so. If an artist is aware of negative space--the space around the subject--then he's more likely to create an interesting composition. Kids and grownups alike tend to put their subject matter smack in the middle of the drawing or painting and call it a day.

I came across the designs of Florent Bodart on Threadless, a really wonderful website where designers and artists can submit designs for t-shirts or vote for other designs that have been submitted. The winning designs are sold on shirts and the artists get a percentage of the fee.

Florent's work is bold and delicate at the same time. He works with a variety of styles but the one that grabbed me was his animals. They are drawn simply or silhouetted against black. Then he applies lines of patterns to fill the animal's shape.

Florent Bodart rocks his negative space!

What a great opportunity to teach the kids about using negative space to help the composition.

VOILA! Merci, Florent!

My apologies to my students, I seem to have only saved one photo from last week. Lucky for me it is a fantastic one! Congrats to the artist!