Cup Art

I try to look for unusual ideas as drawing topics for my Grade 10 students. I came across the work of Cheeming Boey on Pinterest.  “Cheeming Boey is a game designer and animator based in Newport Beach, California. He creates designs on styrofoam cup using ordinary sharpie pens.”I didn’t specify what mediums my students should use. I gave them the Styrofoam cups bought from a local supermarket & told them to give them back to me transformed. I did show them the following image in a slide show:

Most girls like Catherine and Elizabeth drew on the cups either using fineliners (sharpies) or they used ballpoint pens.

Some students transformed their cups into mini sculptures. Keyla’s sculptural cup was inspired by Bakers Tennis Biscuits.  

 

Winning Art

I recently entered some of my Grade 10, 11 and 12 students’ artwork into the “Visual Arts Exhibition” held at the Durban University of Technology. They run an annual art competition and exhibition that includes artwork from ages Grade R to Post-matriculation.  My Grade 12 students Maxine and Bronwyn have won first and second prize at Grade 12 level and Keyla has won the first prize at Grade 10 level. We will be attending the prize giving ceremony on Monday night.I have blogged about Maxine’s work before; you can read and see her work here.

Bronwyn’s work titled: Once upon a Nightmare, deals with the subliminal power of the media in influencing children’s minds. She looks specifically at fairytales and has researched the work of Paula Rego to inform her own work.

She also looked at Florian Nicolle’s work in terms of technique.

Bronwyn has a very sophisticated drawing style and works very well in ink and markers. She layers watercolour in splatters, smudges and drips of paint; lacquer thinners transfers; and finally draws her imagery on top of this layered surface.  All of the following images are by Bronwyn.

Rorschach blots as inspiration for drawing

One of my ex-students Clari, studying at Vega (a design school in Durban), is working on a project that involves drawing on Rorschach blots. She is looking at how people interpret these blots differently in drawings.  The following drawing is by Clari: 

She asked me if I would get involved in this project. I gave the following PDF files to my Grade 10 & 11 students: The first file is a compilation of the original Rorschach blots & the second file is made up of blots Clari made up herself They were allowed to look at the blots – select one they liked, print it out & then create a drawing integrating the blot.  

The following drawings are by Paula, Minal, Barry, Suzanna and Sahraa respectively:  

 

Teaching drawing

I don’t have time to teach observation drawing during the school day, so my students have to hand in a drawing that is done at home once every two weeks of the term. I set specific topics that are given to the students at the beginning of each term. Two of the more successful topics have been:

1. Tear a printed image or find a printed image & extend the drawing. I exposed the students to the work of Lauren Spencer King who extends scenes from vintage photographs.

The following images are student's work - by Chia-Min (Grade 11), Keyla (Grade 10) and Yentl (Grade 11) respectively.

2. Draw someone or something you love - and journal about it. I wasn’t too concerned about what they wrote – more about how they integrated text into their drawings. I introduced them to Andrea Joseph. (I have recently blogged about her work)

Lino printing panties…

This year I decided to extend the lino project I did with my Grade 10 students last year. I told them to find an image that they felt represented their personality or had some personal symbolic significance. This image was imported into a photo-editing programme (Gimp) & I taught them how to remove backgrounds from their chosen images & flatten the tones using various tools (one of the tools being “cartoonify”). We printed these images and the prints were transferred on to soft linoleum using lacquer thinners transfer. All of this happened at the end of a week at the beginning of this term. By the Friday everyone has started cutting tiles. I thought that the class would take the following week to complete their cutting – silly me! They were so enthusiastic that the majority of the class completed the tiles on the weekend & by Monday morning they were ready to print!

 

I gave them various printing options & asked them to hand in their three best prints. The options are listed below: 

1.     Image on WHITE - EVERYONE MUST DO NO. 1.

2.     Same image on COLOURED, PLAIN sheet

3.     COLLAGE coloured paper

4.     Collage in tissue paper over print

5.     Use existing (other) image, i.e. magazines, photocopies of previous work, thinners print, old paper, etc. - choose carefully.  Beware of printing on too old paper, badly chosen newspaper print, etc.

6.     FROTTAGE/rubbing

7.     Print on fabric or any other interesting surface

(This list was compiled from a printing list created by Jeanette Gilks for a printmaking workshop I attended a few years ago) 

 The following images are representative of the variety submitted for marking. Some students handed in their prints on mirrors, tiles, canvas, and surprisingly - even a pair of panties (the student assured me they were new - I am smiling as I write this)