Levels of Emotion.

Levels of Emotion. It is not surprising that children are easily motivated to createartworks based on the human face. After all, portraiture portraiture,the art of representing the physical or psychological likeness of a real or imaginary individual. The principal portrait media are painting, drawing, sculpture, and photography. From earliest times the portrait has been considered a means to immortality. is one subjectfor which students can bring years of observational research to theirwork. From an early age, a child can distinguish parents from otherindividuals and even begin the complicated process of extracting anemotional statement from an arched or furrowed fur��row?n.1. A long, narrow, shallow trench made in the ground by a plow.2. A rut, groove, or narrow depression: snow drifting in furrows.3. brow. As the Bluffsview fourth-graders entered the art room, theirattention was immediately drawn to the Expressionist portraits displayedin the front of the room. When asked for individual reactions to theposters, the students called upon the vocabulary of previous lessons,describing the portraits as "abstract." Soon students were asking why the artists chose abstraction astheir artistic style and why the colors were not natural. It didn'ttake long for the word "exaggeration" to surface as we talkedabout the Expressionists and their passion to distort shape and color asan expression of emotion and feeling. As mirrors were passed to eachmember of the class, I described brief scenarios intended to createexpressions, of "happy," "sad," "angry"and "surprise." The students practiced these expressions,noting from their reflections what happened to the lines in their facesas their emotions changed. It was time to record our observations. Students were given12" x 9" sheets of newsprint and were asked to select oneemotion. They were then instructed to sketch an exaggerated portrait ofthe emotion, filling the entire page. The following week, two pieces of 12" x 9" cardboard weregiven to each student. The class was asked to cut out their newsprintportrait and after tracing the entire silhouette on one piece of thecardboard, cut out the shape and glue it to the second sheet ofcardboard. The process continued by cutting each of the larger featuresfrom the newsprint shape, tracing it on the cardboard, cutting thetraced shape out and gluing each to the final artwork. Studentscontinued cutting smaller shapes from within larger shapes and gluingeach new shape to the final art piece. Careful attention was given tospreading the glue all the way to the edges of the bottom pieces toensure that the added pieces would not curl. In the end, our portraitstook on the appearance of a topographical map See under Cadastral. - Topographical surveying. See under Surveying.See also: Topographic . As the class gathered for discussion the third week, the colorless col��or��less?adj.1. Lacking color.2. Weak in color; pallid.3. Lacking animation, variety, or distinction; dull. See Synonyms at dull. portraits and the abstract prints welcomed us from the front of theroom. Before we delved into the benefits of adding color, Icouldn't help but use this opportunity to review the concept ofrelief work. The high-reliefs that the fourth grade had created theprevious year protruded well off the surface of their work and I wantedto emphasize the opposite effect of a bas-relief technique. Although the cardboard portraits showed emotion through theselection of organic and geometric shapes This is a list of geometric shapes. Generally composed of straight line segmentspolygon concave polygon constructible polygon , it was obvious aftercomparing the cardboard faces to the posters that color would be anintricate part of the project's success. Students were quick tomake individual judgments as to the colors that would best express theemotion they had chosen to illustrate. The effects of warm and coolcolors, the mixing of tints and shades “Tint” redirects here. For other uses, see tint (disambiguation) In color theory, a tint is the mixture of a color with white (also called a pastel color) , and a shade is the mixture of a color with black. , and the fact that thecomplementary colors offer high contrast and excitement to work were allreviewed. Upon the completion of the painting, found objects were offered foremphasis. Feathers, cotton, sprinkles, plastic flowers and the likehelped the students to better emphasize the desired emotion they weretrying to express. The completed portraits were displayed in the hall in a quilt-likefashion, fitting the faces close to one another. While the display madea striking example of fourth-grade creativity, I believe that thestudents learned how to better express themselves through the use ofshape and color. Marcia H. Buban is the visual art specialist at BluffsviewElementary School elementary school:see school. in West Washington, Ohio.