Visual Arts: Montage and Portrait

 

Name Montage

In the Visual Arts workshop today, we had to show our name montage to Robyn.  I got to see some of the work done by the other students and it was interesting to see the personal information revealed through the work. It was like showing a cross section of yourself on a paper. Some of them needed explanations, some of them did not. I thought some of them were exceptionally outstanding. One thing every montage had in common was that each of these works was extremely meaningful to the person who created it.  To produce my montage I had to evaluate myself to find out what mattered to me and what I wanted to reveal and then find a way to convey my ideas.

My name montage

While developing my montage, I found it initially frustrating to come up with ideas and material to portray my ideas. Even though I am in no way satisfied with the end product, I grudgingly admit to enjoying the process. My only complaint is that I would have liked some more peace and lack of pressure while indulging in my artistic self.

S-Star sign-Capricorn/goat/

O- Origin/Background-Aum-India-yoga-wisdom

N- Needs- Nature/Books/Asian food/ movies

A- aversions-hurtful behaviour

T-Temptations (junk food)

A-Things that I admire- art and architecture


Portrait

 

My attempt at portrait drawing

Portrait-Steps

In today’s class I had to draw a portrait of the person sitting opposite to me. Robyn led us through the basic steps in creating a portrait as follows.

1) Draw an oval (egg) that fills most of the paper.
2) Divide the oval in half by drawing a line horizontal (to correctly fix the position of eyes; I didn’t know that eyes were positioned almost in the middle of the face, the other half is taken up by eyelids, eyebrows, forehead and hair) (then quarter the face by drawing a vertical line in the middle of the oval- this is a personal preference).
3) Divide the lower half, further into another half and then once more to fix the length of nose and position of the lips respectively.
4) Divide the first line into five parts to find the position of eyes.
5)  Modify the outline of the face to resemble that of your model for the portrait.

The end result of this session was definitely a human face, but it had little resemblance to my sitting model. Next time I draw a portrait I would definitely like to work from a photo rather than a moving object. The drawing teacher in our school never taught us how to draw a portrait and this was an enlightening experience.

 

Sample self portraits from a Kindergarten class.

The following are some samples of what kindergarten can achieve in terms of drawing self portraits guided through the aforementioned steps (gathered during my professional experience)

 

Ideas for teaching

The name montage/portrait can be used as a fun way to get to know your students as well as a way to engage them in a creative self evaluation process.