Thinking of Ways to Represent...

In an effort to strengthen our fine motor skills, to develop our hand-eye coordination, and to become better observers, students began class this week by practicing sketching self portraits.  I must admit that I love watching children draw people; there is something about their rapidly-developing mark making that engages my curiosity (besides, who can resist a child's self portrait?!)  While examining our reflections in a mirror, we began to discuss many ways to represent who we really are.  In these conversations, our students primarily focused on the way they feel and found it very humorous to make faces at one another to represent various emotions...

... My intention with this lesson was less about emotions and more about how we could represent ourselves (I had hoped to allow them to create a drawing and later guide a conversation about how we did not have to make a picture of our faces to show who we are)...However, in true Reggio style, I could not end their intense interest about feelings and emotions...  So I simply (although a bit reluctantly) went with their ideas...

As our students made faces in a mirror, they noticed how the lines in their faces transformed.  It was difficult to draw exactly what we saw, so we began to use a digital camera to take pictures of ourselves.  Many of our students have not used a digital camera before and were very interested in learning how to use one.  We were also introduced to the idea of a "monoprint" - a type of printmaking based on the idea that no two prints are exactly alike.  In monoprinting, an artist paints directly onto a smooth surface with ink (in our case: tempera on glass).  A piece of paper is placed on top of the painting, and a print is made.  Students found painting onto a glass surface exciting as well as unusual ("Are you sure you want us to paint on this and not on the paper?").  We also ran into many challenges while practicing the technique:  the paint dried too quickly, it smudged if we "squished" the paper on, and in some cases, the print did not transfer completely.  It was interesting to have three very different media to examine - at the end of class, we were left with a sketch of ourselves, a crisp, exact photo, and a smudged- hard to read- print.

My initial intention to explain how we can represent ourselves in many ways became how we could represent ourselves in multiple types of media - which I feel became a much richer lesson in the end.  It is my hope that our students return to the atelier discussing ways they would like to explore their ideas.   As for "multiple representations," well, I think we may already be there!

Student practicing painting onto a glass surface to create a monoprint

A student compares her reflection in a mirror to her sketch