Mirror image

I found this in a book of miniatures, and loved the simplicity of it. I'll see if I can find more information on it. In the meantime, use a xerox machine to print a mirror image of something, and then collage both images in a way that makes it look like an actual reflection. Black and white reflections against a colored background could be powerful. Or divide the page in half and have everything in color on one side, and black and white on the other. Rendering the same designs in black and white and color is a great graphic design exercise in itself.

 

Gond painting

 

 

The Gond people believe that viewing a good image brings you good luck so it's no surprise that their paintings are so joyful. They make the paintings on the walls of their houses to mark special occasions and only recently started to paint on paper with poster paints. Animals and nature scenes dominate these paintings, which consist of a simple single color shape filled with dots and lines described here as being: like undulations of song, like fables within tales, colourful dots and lines chase each other in close succession. Immense patience and delicate brush strokes are part of the meditative process. The Gond tribe was known for storytelling and song, and a connection could be made between that and the rhythmic energy of their heavily patterned artwork. One artist I spoke to told me the inspiration for the dots and dashes that fill the animals is rice, and the article I linked to above says they are evocative of the tattoos on the Gond women. The simple graphics combined with intricate patterning and vibrating colors provide instant inspiration for artists of all ages.

 

After outlining their animal shapes with pencil, children should choose one main color in acrylic or tempera paint to fill them in. Good quality markers or sharpies could be used for the patterning, or detail brushes and paint in both bright colors, black, and white. This could also be a great collage project, a photograph of an animal could be traced and cut out of fadeless paper or traced once onto multiple layers of colored tissue papers. Once those papers have been glued to a white background, acrylic paint can be added with a detail brush or toothpick. Dots, lines, and dashes can be used or students could think of a pattern that has some special significance. Add a black marker outline for a final touch.

 

 

Red-faced monkeys of Delhi

The kindergarten kids loved hearing my stories about the trouble-making red-faced monkeys in Delhi. The monkeys broke into the kitchen and destroyed the salad, stole Marilyn's cashews and dried fruit, followed me ominously when I was with Richard who carried oranges, and ran in the main road alongside traffic near the National Museum. The girls also enjoyed hearing about how these creatures plague the American School so much that sometimes the school hires men to bring huge but friendly black-faced langur monkeys to the yard on leashes to walk around and scare the red guys away.

We looked at pictures of the monkeys and talked about what we saw. I asked a few questions out loud and let children shout out their answers, I didn't dwell on 'right' or 'wrong' answers, but wanted to make sure they were noticing and thinking about what they were seeing. I asked 'are their eyes close together or far apart?' 'Are their mouths smiling lines or straight lines?' etc before inviting them to make these marker and colored pencil creations. They were challenged to make parts of the monkey touch the edges of the paper (and were allowed to say 'bump!' whenever their markers hit the edge, which is a great way to encourage bold drawings). Colored pencil choices were limited to a few different browns, pinks, and reds so the artists could have some freedom but not get too far off task. In subsequent lessons early finishers have been asked to make pictures in their sketchbooks of monkeys being bad. They love that assignment.

 

 

CDs, Berlin

We were greeted by these strings of CDs when we got off the train at Friedrichshain, and it served as a great reminder of the beauty of really simple ideas and the iridescence and potential of these soon to be obsolete everyday objects.