Layers of Meaning: Fabric Portraits

WITNESSING

LAYERS OF MEANING: FABRIC PORTRAITS

Grade 4-7

*** If you take home your kit, please bring back all the materials as they will be used with school groups.

*** Please create your own shape templates with the mylar I have provided and bring those back to the Studio to use with classes. If you would like a cutting pad and exacto blade you are welcome to borrow those from the supply room.

Duration: 1hr

10// Introduction and demos

20// Drawing and stamping

10// Cut outs

10// Paper under drawing

10// Clean up and sharing

Final Project Description:

A mixed media portrait using fabric, chalk pastel pencils, ink pads, cut outs, and cut fabric.

Description:

In the Gallery, students will be guided through close observations of Alicia Henry’s mixed media figures through drawing and conversation. These drawings and reflections will then inspire their own work in our studios where they will create a portrait using fabric, chalk pastel pencils, stencils, and fabric.

Theory:

This project connects to Arts Education Big Ideas across grades K through 8, exploring how art can be a way to connect with and understand our community and our role within it.

Creation & Analysis:

***In the Gallery exercise: Ask students to look closely as Alicia’s work, have them look at the shapes, forms, textures, lines, materials, colours, patterns etc.

Group students into small groups and have them use each other as inspiration for drawn portraits. Tie into the conversation about how Alicia’s portraits take inspiration from both specific people, as well as more generally from memories of faces within her community.

Have students break into small groups (approx. 4 but whatever works best with your group size) have students draw portraits using one another’s faces as reference. Ask them to take inspiration from each person in their group, the result being a hybrid face combining the features of their classmates.

Step 1: Introduction to material

We are going to use the drawings we made while in the gallery as inspiration for our mixed-media portraits.

In the studio today we are going to use a combination of fabric, drawing, cutting, and stamping to create our portraits!

Let’s first look at all the materials we are going to use today. Each of you has a piece of canvas in front of you, you might remember this material from our scrap game! The canvas is going to act like our paper, we will draw our portraits on it using these pastel pencil crayons. I’m sure you’ve all used pencil crayons before and maybe pastels? Well, these are a combination of the two! They are great for drawing on fabric.

(DEMO drawing on canvas)

There are also white rectangles in your materials. These are ink pads! You might have used something similar before with stamps, pressing the stamp onto the pad then pressing the stamp onto the paper. Today we are going to use the ink pads to transfer ink directly onto our canvas, creating shapes with these templates.

The shape templates are made from a plastic paper called mylar and are meant to be cleaned and reused! So, let’s treat them nicely so we don’t create unnecessary waste and other kids can use them in the future.

(DEMO stamping process)

There are two colours of ink, a coral, and a teal. The ink will dry quickly on our canvas, so we can also draw overtop of areas we ink, and if we wait a couple minutes, we can also layer stamped shapes over one another!

The final technique I want us to use today is creating cut out portions of our portraits, we saw this technique in the Gallery in many of Alicia’s works! So, when you are drawing your portrait, consider areas you’d like to cut out and create negative space.

(DEMO cutting an area out of your drawing)

Okay now that we know all the tools we are going to use to create today, let’s begin!

Step 2: Drawing Face shape and Features

Let’s begin by drawing a face shape on our canvas.

Make sure we draw our faces nice and big! We want them to take up most of the canvas, so we have lots of room to draw our features inside.

Once you have drawn your face shape you can begin drawing your other features in! Remember you have your drawings from the Studio you can use as reference, or perhaps you can look around the classroom for more inspiration.

Remember while you are drawing, to plan area/areas that you will then cut out with scissors, and areas that you will add shapes. The stamped shapes can act either as features (example: triangle for nose), the base for a feature over which you can add drawn details, or they can be added decorative elements, adding emphasize and colour to certain areas of your composition.

We talked about how Alicia’s figures all come together to create a sort of community in the Gallery, do you think the portraits we are making will too?

Another aspect of Alicia’s portraits that is compelling is the way she captures expressions, let’s consider what kind of expression and emotion you want to capture in your portraits. Our faces can convey a lot of information to those around us about how we are feeling.

Step 2: Stamping

Now that you all have some of your drawing done, I want you to add some stamped shapes! The stamped shapes can act either as features (example: triangle for nose), the base for a feature over which you can add drawn details, or they can be added decorative elements, adding emphasize and colour to certain areas of your composition.

By drawing over top our stamped shapes and cutting holes in our canvas we are creating layers in our work. In the Gallery we talked about how Alicia uses layers in her work, can you remember what we discussed?

Alicia likes the possibilities layering allow her to explore. She feels they help create a sense of successive emotions or feelings, or certain aspects of who we are what we reveal.

Step 3: Cut outs and cutting face shape

Have students cut out the areas they’ve decided will be negative space. Students can also cut out their portrait at this stage, cutting along their face shape or whatever shape they desire the final piece to be.

Step 4: Under Drawings if time

If there is time, students can draw on paper and layer it underneath their canvas, having this show through the regions they’ve cut out. They can play with the placement of the paper and what is revealed through the cut outs. They can then adhere the paper pieces to the canvas using glue.

Step 5: Clean up and Share

Materials:

·      Canvas pieces (“?” x”?”)

·      Pastel pencils

·      Ink Pads

·      Mylar shape templates

·      Scissors

Prep:

-       Cut canvas into “?” x “?” pieces using fabric scissors

-       Set up stations with ink pads, pastel pencils, and templates. One station per ? children

-       Scissors for each student

-       Instructor demos on hand