This project will provide students with the opportunity to explore self-portraiture and personal mark making through the investigation of Chuck Close’s fingerprint ink portraits. This style will allow students to practice drawing self-portraits from observation, as well as provide students with the opportunity to experiment expressively with fingerprint marks. Students should be able to move on from this lesson and build upon this knowledge to enhance their ability to render value changes in observational drawing.
This project also explores Chuck Close’s disabilities. Students in the fourth grade learn about various physical and mental disabilities, and will be able to draw connections between the disabilities learned in class and how Close has addressed his struggle with dyslexia, proposagnosia, and paralysis.
Relationship to Life
This lesson provides students with the opportunity to create a self-portrait using measuring and drawing techniques to render the human face accurately. Students are encouraged to create multiple sketches with many layers in order to produce a realistic self-portrait to the best of their abilities. Students will build upon their knowledge from the Luchador unit, in which students were required to produce a mask that is proportionate to the human face. Students must also attempt to create value changes using fingerprints to form shape and shadow gradation. Studying Chuck Close gives students insight into contemporary art, and exposes students to a modern response to contemporary culture.
Students in the fourth grade participate in a unit on people with physical disabilities. Learning about Chuck Close will allow students to realize that famous people have disabilities too, and that successful people with disabilities have found ways to overcome or bypass physical restraints. Students will be informed of Close’s rehabilitation, and how his disability has changed his career.
Children begin to become more concerned with expressing images in a realistic way. It is during this stage that children are most critical of themselves, and therefore, are usually unsatisfied with how their drawings turn out, because it is during this stage that children realize the difference between drawing for the sake of drawing and drawing to accurately represent something. Children become more concerned with details and specific characteristics that define gender, age, location, time, etc in an image. Children also want to “make art”, and are often frustrated with their inability to creatively and accurately portray an image or idea.
Themes start to come into play with the introduction of abstract thought. Children can portray both realistic and imaginary scenes. Gender-related themes often come into play: boys will tend to draw sports, cars, superheroes, and cartoon characters, while girls will draw animals, flowers, hearts, and fashion-oriented images.
Specificity in an image is important in describing age, gender, proportions, and definitive features, however children are now able to think abstractly.
Regression is a common theme in child art at this stage. If a child is unable to depict something the way they want, they often resort to stick figures or cartoon-like images to mask or compensate for their inability to draw realistically. Often times, children become so disconnected from the art making process due to their frustration that they begin to draw haphazardly, and details are often sketchy or ignored all together, (Simpson, 1998).
Progress is made in a child’s move away from drawing using frontal views only, and with their deeper understanding of perspective and depth in the picture plane. Horizon lines come into play, and children are aware of a foreground, middle ground and background.
Color is used in a more realistic way, however children begin to trade crayons and markers for pencils to allow for editing and corrections in their work. Pencils also allow for complete manipulation of the tool. This is important in this stage because children are concerned with perfection, and a material that is difficult to use or time consuming will only add to their frustration.
Goals
Students should:
Understand: American styles and genres of dance, music, theatre, or visual arts and architecture, describe their sources, trace their evolution, and cite well-known artists associated with these styles.
(MACF Standard 8)
The art making processes necessary to design and create their object.
(MACF Standard: 4)
Know: The art making processes necessary to design and create their object.
(MACF Standard: 4)
Examples of innovation and tradition in the arts, and explain the works in relation to historical and cultural contexts.
(MACF Standards: 8 and 9)
Be Able to:
Produce/construct an object that enables personal voices.
(MACF Standard: 1)
Objectives
Identify and use ideas of one’s self to communicate through art making.
Use a variety of tools and techniques to apply the formal qualities of art.
Analyze and apply thematic color theory to adequately show difference in planes and light and dark.
Demonstrate an understanding of ways Chuck Close planned and worked on portraits.
Instructional Concepts
“Like all of Close’s portraits, the source for this image is a photograph, but in this instance it seems that the artist was able to transcend his self-imposed reliance upon the image captures on film to produce a likeness in which the subject is inescapably a living, breathing presence.”
“Chuck Close paints portraits, but to describe him as a portrait painter is patently inadequate. His reputation as one of the most accomplished and compelling artists working today derives from the imagination and skill with which he as repeatedly reconceived how a human likeness can be set sown on canvas or paper, so that, despite the restricted parameters of his subject matter, the arc of his career reveals him as endlessly inventive.”
“…the softness of the subject’s flesh is evoked with a gentleness of touch that is itself a tangible expression of affection.”
Line can be used to invent forms.
Texture can be used to create surface variety.
Forms can be described in relation to parts of a whole.
Balance can be achieved through the arrangement of line, shape, color, texture, space, or form within a composition.
Unity can be achieved through repetition of line, shape, color, texture, space, or form in a composition.
Space can be achieved through the variation of size, shape and placement.
Rhythm can be achieved by varying the size of line, color, texture, shape and form.
Variety can be achieved through a change in tone or value.
Introducing children to art develops their visual awareness and provides a springboard for personal image making.
Drawing from observation helps students develop perceptive skills such as those used to define edges, and background and object shapes and spaces.
Brainstorming helps students work through problems and eliminate challenges before working on their final projects.
Resources and Materials
Materials: Exemplars:
Sketch paper Teacher Exemplar
Mirrors Phil/Fingerprint, Chuck Close, 1980
Scanner Phil Fingerprint/Random, Chuck Close, 1979
18”x24” drawing paper Fanny/Fingerpainting, Chuck Close, 1985
Ink pads
Pencils
Motivation
The teacher will show students master exemplars by Chuck Close. The students will be shown the progression of style, from photo-realistic portraits to the more abstracted fingerprint portraits. The master exemplars will include details of the paintings to show students how their drawings will be colored in. The teacher will have prepared self-portrait exemplar. The students will be shown the portrait up close, and then the teacher will walk farther away, the entire showing the class the picture to demonstrate how the picture changes when the fingerprint marks blend together from a distance.
Questions
Topic Questions:
Why do you think Chuck Close decided to use different mark-making techniques and materials as a progression away from photorealistic portraits?
Which style of painting is more expressive? Painterly? Which style of painting do you think is better suited for describing the personality of a person?
Association Questions:
Is this style of painting like any other style you have seen before?
What does the use of fingerprints do? Do they make paintings feel a certain way?
Have you ever had your picture taken, or your portrait painted? What does painting a portrait of a person do for that person? Does a painting make the portrait more special?
Visualization Questions:
How might using your fingers affect your sensitivity to making marks?
How might adjusting the pressure of a fingerprint affect how the picture looks and feels?
Transition questions:
What Elements and Principles of Design are most important to remember when drawing a portrait?
Procedures
Demonstration
The teacher will first show students selections from the Chuck Close book, starting first with photorealistic pictures, and going through the transition to the black and white and color fingerprint portraits. The teacher will then show his or her finished teacher exemplar, which will be on the same size paper that the students will be using. The teacher will then demonstrate how to draw a human face, showing how to build forms through the use of simple shapes. The teacher will then show students how to add value-using fingerprints, demonstrating that the amount of ink used or the number of layers will create form. The teacher will then discuss requirements for the assignment- a portrait that shows value change, which is shaded using ink fingerprints-and go over new vocabulary. The teacher will allow students to make sketches on the first day, and will instruct students to make a final drawing. The teacher will enlarge the portraits and return the larger-formatted pictures to the students to add value. The teacher will repeatedly demonstrate technique of how to color in different areas on their own portrait that might be confusing or challenging for students.
Vocabulary:
Value- A gradation of tone from light to dark or of color luminosity; the relation of one of these elements to another or to the whole picture.
Photorealism- A style of painting that depicts commonplace scenes or ordinary people, with a meticulously detailed realism, flat images, and barely discernable brushwork that suggests and often is based on or incorporates an actual photograph.
Abstraction- Of or pertaining to the formal aspect of art, emphasizing lines, colors, generalized or geometrical forms, etc., especially with reference to their relationship to one another.
Distribution
Students will first be provided with a mirror and sketch paper to practice drawing their own portraits. Students will be given a new piece of paper when they think they are able to create a sufficiently realistic portrait. Students will hand in these final drawings, and the teacher will scan and enlarge the portraits, which will be redistributed to the students. When the students have received their large portrait, they may add value with ink.
Work period
On the first day, students will be given mirror and sketch paper to practice drawing a self-portrait. Students have the option of making a second, final portrait once they have practiced. Once the students receive their enlarged portraits, students must show an understanding of distinct value change (highlights and shadow) with fingerprints to help describe forms on the face.
Clean-up
At the end of each class, students must make sure their names are on their projects. Students must keep their portraits in their folders, unless handing in work to the teacher to be scanned. Mirrors must be put away. If the students are adding value, each student is responsible for cleaning and returning his or her own ink pad.
Closure
The teacher will go over what should have been accomplished by the end of the class, and what will be expected of each student during their next meeting. The teacher will answer any questions with the entire class to avoid confusion. The teacher will review where materials and projects should be put away, and the class will be dismissed.
Evaluation
Students will be evaluated based on their understanding of procedure. Students are expected to complete a preliminary drawing before moving on to the final drawing. The preliminary drawings should demonstrate ability in recognizing value change and being able to observe and draw facial features. Final drawings should demonstrate an ability to recognize the difference between light and dark values, and how to use fingerprints to create gradation and show form. Students must show an ability to make decisions for where it is appropriate to add multiple layers, use less ink or vary pressure of fingerprints. Neatness, creativity and composition are important components of this assignment.
Did the students…
Did the students draw a preliminary sketch and a final portrait, paying attention to proportion and defining physical features?
Did the students use fingerprints to add value?
Did the students show experimentation or an understanding of layering, amount of ink, varying pressure, etc?
Did the students create an image that looks like a cohesive portrait from far away?