"Creativity is contagious, pass it on." - Albert Einstein
A light breeze brushes across my cheek like a whisper as we study our model with focused eyes while she holds her pose. The six students and I take turns as the designated figure model while the rest of the class overlaps life drawings in charcoal. A few birds chuckle from the roof and a train seems to come out of nowhere on the tracks behind the school, but the high school students sitting outside with their artboards are completely “in the zone” for observational drawing.
Inspired by the artwork of the Cubist period, the “Fragmented Portraits” unit combines developing representational life drawing skills with abstracted drawings of the subject using charcoal and mixed media. Abstract artists such as Pablo Picasso, George Braque, and even the contemporary artist, Alexandra Nechita, distorted their subjects through multiple views, fragmented planes, and intentional use of color.
The students volunteered to pose as the figure model over the past two weeks while their classmates filled their sheets with charcoal gesture drawings, rotating the paper and varying the scale until they completed a balanced, unified composition. Their drawings were constantly in a state of “work-in-progress” as they continued to refine areas of interest built up from the layers of charcoal lines and apply the feedback from their peers from our group critiques on a daily basis.
It was interesting for me to see the students take ownership in the artistic process by considering: When is an artwork actually finished? Or how much should I continue to overlap before I’ve drawn too much? What am I trying to portray to the viewer through my drawings? They relied on peer feedback to validate their progress and offer suggestions to others on the steps to take next in the artwork.
The drawings began to transform when we introduced the mixed media materials in watercolor and oil pastel. Positive and negative spaces suddenly revealed themselves from the background when highlighting specific areas of the artwork. Within the parameters of the project, each piece of art began to take shape with its own mood, theme, and sense of style that was very different from the others. Works that had once been representational figure drawings became fragmented, distorted interpretations of the original subject posing for the group.
I’m proud of the artwork they created and how much they collaborated as a team of artists to develop such original works of art. It’s important to stretch our perceptions of what is considered “art” when the process of making art is an outlet for observing reality and then reinterpreting what we see through our own imagination.
“Don’t think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.” – Andy Warhol
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