Tissue Collage Portfolios

Every year my Beginning 2-D kids amaze and astound me with the incredible effort they put into creating their portfolio designs.  This is a 17 day assignment, one of their longest and most complex.  It's also extremely tedious and helps them perfect their craftsmanship skills.

The unit is about many of the design elements and principlesthey are lerning about; shape, pattern, texture, color, balance, rhythm, movement, and focal points.  They are combining many things in this assignment and the requirements are a page long.  They definitely jumped thru a few hoops for me on this assignment.  But boy,oh boy, look what I got!  Sorry the photos didn't turn out better, I shot them in the wrong light.  I opened up most of them so you could see both sides of their portfolios, as well as some close-up shots of the visual textures they were required to incorporate.

Above and below is the work of 8th grader (yes 8th grader!) Annie Oh.  She is an up and coming superstar and future art major.  She is also the strongest drawer in the class.  We will see some of her drawings at a later date.  One of the requirements was to work in only one color scheme.  Annie chose an analogous one with blues and purples.  The reason many of the photos are so shiny is because I had the kids lay clear packing tape overtop their collages to protect them from a lot of wear.

This next piece by senior Ashley Chowdhury is so unique.  I adore the tree limbs she added as well as the flecks of red.  And look closely at the very special papers she is collaging with.  Wonderful!

Another very talented new artist I have this year is junior Anne Allen.  An extremely out of the box thinker she gives her piece a very special spin with the dinosaur as her focal point.  She is another one who really put a lot of thought into her paper choices. 

And then there is this one by senior Sheila San Agustin.  Can you find the woman's face on both sides?  Pretty cool, huh??  The requirement for subject matter was a sun motif, so as you view all of these pieces you can see the original ways the kids solved this design problem.  I provided them with all the colors of tissue paper, then I asked them to bring in interesting papers from home that had a lot of visual texture in them.  You can see in Sheila's close-up that she has found a lot of fun papers to work with.

One of my favorites this year was this one above by senior Sally Choi.  I felt her color scheme was really dramatic and I loved her use of ombre as she laid her tissue down from lights to darks.  But what is very close to my heart is the use of nature; trees and birds, along with her outline of the sun.  Very beautiful piece Sally! 

This next one by junior Deena Younan also really captured my attention right from the get-go.  She brought in the most gorgeous papers to collage with.  I so wish my pix was better so you could really see what is going on in the close-up below.  Deena always gives me everything she's got when she does an art assignment for me.

Senior Eddie Ponced incorporated his last name into his sun motif in this glorious complimentary color scheme.  What a powerful piece Eddie.  And look at your beautiful craftsmanship too!!! 

And I love the sense of movement that senior Alice Zhang has captured within her design.  Brilliant!

Junior Arim Han has incorporated text into her piece in this very uplifting work, another favorite of mine this year.  Her craftsmanship was impeccable in the assembly.

And look at these 2 close-ups.  All the interesting papers she brought in to work with.  These kids are remarkable students, and I feel so lucky to teach them.  Everyday is a joy to be with them.

Junior Alex Lee is coming on strong with his interpretation of this assignment, creating a lot of movement within his design.  And lastly junior Judy Shih has cleverly incorporated both her last name and a lovely sun motif for two great areas of interest.

I couldn't ask  for more.  All of you outdid yourselves.  Thank you for the time and energy you put into this very complex assignment.

For EXTRA CREDIT, draw a sun motif on yellow or orange paper and cut it out.  Put your name and period on the backside along with the name of the person's portfolio you liked the best.  Hand the sun to me when you walk in the door on Monday.  See you guys soon!