EXAGGERATION & DISTORTION

GLUELINE ABSTRACT PORTRAITS

BEGINNING 2-D ART

white glue & oil pastels on black construction paper

Once my beginning drawers learn to draw each other in a realistic way 

in their Before & After Portraits,

I partner them up again to draw each other in an abstracted way 

using exaggeration & distortion .

One way to do that is by only allowing the kids to draw with the tip of a glue bottle

which distorts all the features right off the bat. 

After the glue dries for 24 hours they go back in with oil pastels

and light and shadow.

I encourage them to try using colors other than what they really see

for additional abstraction.

These are colorful and so much fun.

The kids giggle and have a blast doing them.

This first beauty,

 which reminds me of a Modigliani Masterpiece, 

was done by 8th grader Andrew Lee of 8th grader Ashley Lee.

I love how he elongated the face and neck,

put in necklaces and completely changed up all the realistic colors.

Bravo young Andrew!

And this one totally reminds me of a Picasso when he first started to abstract his own work.

This wonderful piece was done by senior David Tung of 8th grader Siddhant Watwani.

Junior Esther Ahn made 2 pieces (above and below).

Her model was junior Kiana Sanchez,

and I adore both pieces.

It's amazing to me how much creativity comes out of these kids.

Such talent!

Next we see the work of junior Manishka Ranjit.

She was partnered with 8th grader Tin Pham.

She definitely brought her own unique twist to the piece with her signature hat tipped to the side,

and the wonderful hatcher strokes moving the pastels from light to dark.

And we end with 8th grader Madison Plotkin who constructed this gorgeous work of art.

Love her color choices and how she moves them thru their value ranges,

the zentangled line work on the skull mask,

and all the extra flowers she made,

cut out and glued down.

This portrait was of 11th grader Ellya Gholmieh.

Fabulous work Madison.

I'm so proud of all of you!!

WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE

GLUELINE ABSTRACTED PORTRAITS

BEGINNING 2-D ART

elmer's & tacky glue with oil pastel on black construction paper

I've received a few emails since I posted the Glueline assignment in January

about what it looks like when the kids draw with the glue bottles. 

So I checked thru my pix from this last school year and actually found a couple.

So here you go.

We've got junior Jayesh Jani drawing junior Mary Kim.

And senior Howard Lin modeling for Lauren Kennedy (outside the picture frame).

I usually don't allow the kids to draw first in pencil.

We go right to the glue bottles to create a really abstracted portrait.

Yet at the same time the kids are required to make it look somewhat like the model,

so they have to access their new Right Brain skills to make this happen.

That's why Jayesh is looking so intently at Mary.

He is completely unaware that I am taking his pix.

Here junior Sarah Oh,

who has been featured on the blog a lot recently,

saw me coming with my camera so she lost her Right Brain focus,

and she started to blush as I took her pix as she was drawing senior Christley Agbaroji.

So I hope this helps all you art teachers out there who might want to try out this assignment.

And also know it took me about 25 years to acquire a full class set (35) 

of these masonite drawing boards.

Only had the funds to buy a couple a year.

They are fairly expensive.

But man oh man, 

we use them a lot!

A TIME FOR ABSTRACTION

GLUELINE PORTRAITS

BEGINNING 2-D ART

glue bottles & oil pastels on black construction paper

After the beginners go thru the Realistic Right Brain Drawing Unit

 and are able to nail very realistic subjects (like each other),

I turn the tables on them and have them re-draw their same subject in Abstraction.

Now it's all about distortion and exaggeration.

It's also about being able to still recognize the person they are drawing.

So it's a fairly sophisticated and difficult task I'm asking of them.

Let's see how they did.

Junior Mary Kim had junior Jayesh Jani that she was working with

 and all of us felt like she really captured him in a wonderfully abstracted way.

Plus she put in a wonderfully eerie backdrop as well.

Senior Cathy Huang,

who always includes a great sense of irony in all her works,

whether in clay or 2-d,

 drew  senior Jocelyn Chou.

Fantastic, clever piece Cath!

We all loved junior Tiffany Chen's portrait of junior William Tan,

because she not only only captured his likeness,

 but we also really enjoyed her analogous color choices

which gave the piece lots of sensory yumminess.

Senior Julie Guan worked with junior Raymond Ouyang

and managed to turn him into an adorable other worldly alien.

And Sarah  Oh did some strange but cool imaginings with the face of senior Christley Agbaroji.

I also really enjoyed how she built out the background with more treats for the eye.

Melissa Ongko gave us a dreamy rendeniton of junior Jesus Macias  

with the exaggeration of his already extremely long eyelashes.

Melissa also shows she has mastered the movement in value from light to dark.

And senior Lauren Kennedy had the good fortune to be partnered with senior Howard Lin

who had the most beautiful head of hair to work with.

She also shows us how powerful a complementary color scheme (blue/orange) can be.

I hope all of you enjoyed how well these turned out.

They are always one of my favorite assignments

 because you never know what you are going to get from the kids.

PUSHING THE ENVELOP

GLUELINE PORTRAITS

BEGINNING 2-D ART

white glue on black construction paper & oil pastel

Once again, 

the Beginners drew their partners from real time,

but they were told to exaggerate & distort their features,

but not so much that we couldn't recognize who they were drawing.

The easiest way to do this was to give them an Elmer's glue bottle as a pencil on black paper.

That's right,

to draw with the nozzle.

They first experimented with both Tacky & Elmer's glues to see which one they liked best.

They were also asked to fill up the negative space to balance the piece,

and to use oil pastels to fill in between the gluelines after they dried.

The results were terrific as you will see.

And done just in time to show off at Open House.

Let's take a look.

Sophomore Mikaela  (Mikey) Guerrero drew senior Nandan Vinjamery.

We all loved what she also did with the backdrop.

Brilliant work Mikey,

and we miss you already.

Mikey graduated 2 years early from Whitney and has started college this year.

She is not only an incredible artist but an amazing scholar as well.

And she plays the Violin beautifully on top of everything else!

Superstar status.

Sorry Mikaela

 when you dropped by recently,

 I didn't have time to chat.

Please try again when you are back in town.

Hopefully I won't be so crazy busy.  :)

Sophomore Kevin Mao had lovely senior Emily Allan as his subject,

and below sophomore Clarissa Kim drew cutie pie junior Eunice Shim.

Then Eunice had the pleasure of working with senior Jae Olan,

handsome boy....

It's so much fun to see how each of these young artists portray their subject.

Right Eunice? 

LOL

Junior Jazzerie Lo drew this really exciting portrait of senior Sriram Velmanikandan,

and below junior Malaya Sithichai worked with the long haired Thomas Kang.

Love how she morphed his body into a tree with landscape.

Clever girl!

Then here is Emily's fun & expressive portrait of Kev.

Love it Em!

And what a cool design junior Vicky Hur chose for senior Kyung Lee.

I especially love the backdrop.

She penciled right over the oil pastel for a very cool look.

I also like how she chose to elongate his neck.

Great work Vicky!

Here senior Eileen Lee drew senior Andrew Kim,

giving us a clue that perhaps Andrew has two different sides to himself.

You made us stop and take a good look see.

Plus she also changed up her style

which draws our eye right away.

Lastly senior Nandan Vinjamury did an incredible job giving us an interesting view of Mikaela.

He made us think,

 and that's the most important part in a work of art.

Thank you Nandan,

and thank you Beginners for working so very hard last school year,

and making such huge strides in your artistic skills. 

LET'S GET JIGGY

GLUELINE PORTRAITS

BEGINNING 2-D ART

glue bottles and oil pastels

One of my favorite assignments to do with the beginning drawing students are these Glueline Portraits.

It forces the kids to abstract their subjects whether they want to or not.

That's because they have to draw their model with the spout of a glue bottle.

And you can't erase glue.  

Ha ha

We let the glue dry for 24 hours then come back into the piece with oil pastels.

FUN, FUN, FUN!!!!!!!!!!!

Let's take a look.

Superstar junior Jane Juan did these first two (one for extra credit)

Her model on the one above was junior Kyla Balquin,

and on the one below senior Suha Malif.

Everyone was so blown away by both her pieces including me!

Brilliant designs and colorwork Jane.

This next beauty was done by junior Hapshiba Kwon of 8th grader Olivia Krueger.

Not only did she draw flowers in her design,

 but she also attached silk flowers around her edges for additional pop.

Senior Karisma Dev created this very clever work with senior Yasmeen Pardo as her model.

She bordered with an additional piece of paper that she brunt the edges on, 

and on the other side she opened up ketchup cups from McDonalds and smashed them down.

But my favorite part is how she put a censored label over Yasmeen's mouth.

Hummm,

 I wonder why that is Yasmeen 

 LOL

Up and coming star 8th grader Sara Ryave used junior Christopher Wongsavanh as her model.

I think it's so cool how she thought to bring in text into her work,

 and how she  also used the glue spout to create texture in her background.

And her use of color is quite striking as well.

Another talented 8th grader is Olivia Krueger.

I adore her portrait of junior Hapshiba Kwon.

Love the cracked face, 

the lace collar, 

and that gorgeous purple she used for the hair.

Probably your most important piece of the year Olivia!

Junior Katherine Ku went all out on her portrait of junior Jamie Rivas.

She really captured this young man's fastidiousness in dress and appearance.

I also really feel her color choices were spot on.

Besides abstracting with the glue spout, 

I encouraged the kids to abstract thru color, 

distortion and exaggeration.

Here is junior Bernice Lin's portrait of junior Hazel Cruz.

Again we see beautiful color choices, 

and exaggeration

 which makes this such a powerful piece.

Junior Jimmy Hwang turned 8th grader Rochelle Serrano into a fortune teller.

Clever young man!

And lastly we have junior Charity Lazardo's interpretation of senior Suha Malif.

Notice the strong diagonal movement she has created in her design.

Very appealing to the eye,

along with her mainly secondary color scheme.

I hope you've enjoyed seeing these remarkable pieces 

as much as I enjoyed watching the kids create them.

Abstraction at it's Best

GLUELINE PORTRAITS

BEGINNING 2-D ART

oil pastel on black construction paper

Probably one of the funnest assignments all year are these abstracted portraits that the kids do of each other.

They use the same partners as they did in their Before and After Portraits so they are very familiar with each other's faces.

I give them a bottle of glue to draw with, no pencils allowed.

This way the portrait is abstracted from the very get go.We talk about abstracting the face thru simplifying, distortion and exaggeration.

And the abstraction can occur in the drawing or pasteling phase or both.

The results are always electrifying! 

Above we have senior YooBin Han's interpretation of 8th grader Nari Park.

Here junior Michael Cantu has captured junior Zoe Lin.

Senior Catherine Chiou has nailed senior Alex Arias.

And vis-a-versa.  LOL

And lastly we have Nari's portrait of Yoo Bin.

It's remarkable the results you can achieve with glue and oil pastel!

Glueline Portraits - Student Work

In 4th quarter Beginning 2-d Art, my students are introduced to a wide range of color media.  They learn to work with both water and oil based pastels.  In this Glueline assignment I partner them back up with their Before/After partners that they drew so realistically in 3rd quarter.  But this time I ask them to abstract each other thru exaggeration, distortion, simplification and thru color.  But at the same time I still have to be able to recognize the subject.  A very good challenge for them at this point of the year.  The results are often spectacular.

Above we have sophomore Megan Yeu drawing junior Corrine Marcus.

To begin work on these pieces I ask the kids to draw each other with a glueline from either an Elmer's Or Tacky glue bottle.  They make a preliminary piece first to decide which glue they like better.  They also practice starting and stopping their lines.  We let the glue set for 24 hours then the next day they use oil pastels to color the piece in with.  Another choice they have to make is whether they pastel over the glueline or do they stop when they reach the line.  Two very different looks.

Above we have Corrine doing Megan in this very expressive work.

I really like how senior Emily He off-centered her piece of junior Sabrina Velasco, and senior Joan Kim's interpretation of senior Dustin Lee is terrific.  

Senior Victoria Wang is showing sophomore Courtney Soung what she'd look like without hair, and senior and Valedictorian Michelle Chang is emphasiing senior Carolina Navor's beautiful eyelashes.

And our very talented senior William Luo is giving junior Halah Eslsahhar a striking, expressive mood in this last work.

Glueline Oil Pastel Portraits - Student Work

One of my favorite assignments for my Beginning 2-D students are these abstract portraits that the kids draw of each other.  I give them a glue bottle to draw with, and I ask them to try and capture some likeness to original but at the same time, go crazy, be playful and add things to help exaggerate and distort the piece.    The glue lines set up boundaries, so that when the glue is dry, oil pastel can be added over top.  This powerful portrait above was done of junior Gary Fong by junior Michelle Lee.  And below senior Karen Pan did the face of senior Alex Park.  Really well done Karen!

Senior Marivel Aquirre did the fun portrait above of senior Wendy Garcia, and below junior Jhuvin Palaganas was done by senior Jennifer Park.  Very clever piece Jen.

Above very talented senior Rachel Kim drew and pasteled junior Catherine Qain for a very lovely piece.  And below sophomore Ashley Tang did the wonderful portrait below of junior Sandra Cruz.

The lastly we have the work of junior Crislyn Ogawa who worked with senior Michelle Guan below.

It's always a pleasure to show these pieces off, and to see how playful these kids can be.  Great work all of you!