Magritte's Eye
On Tuesday afternoons I teach a special art class to a mixed group of PreK and K students. When I'm planning out the semester I try to find idea or projects in people, places, and things that aren't talked about during the academic day. Sometimes it's crazy pants and other times it's pure magic. This was pure magic.
A gem that I found on Artprojectsforkids.org was an idea for a Magritte "The False Mirror" journal page. I knew it would be a perfect fit for my kids as a stand-alone project. We not only learned about Magritte's surrealism (juxtaposition is SUCH a FUN word!) but we worked on our tracing, cutting, and drawing. Boom. Winner all around!
Materials:
+ 9x12 white sulfite paper
+ pencil and eraser
+ fine point sharpie
+ colorful magazine picture
+ old CD
+ scissors
+ glue
+ skin tone crayons
We started with a look at René Magritte, the Belgian painter who created fanciful worlds where dreams came alive and the real and unreal played neighbors. I used the René Magritte Scholastic Art to show some examples and to talk about juxtaposition and surrealism. Before class I tore out pictures from National Geographic magazines to give my kids options but save time. I demonstrated the first part at the project at the table. Using old CD's we traced a circle onto the chosen magazine photo with a Sharpie. They cut it out, added a pupil, and glued it to the middle of their white paper.
Once that was glued onto the paper we started the drawing process. Talking about the shape of the eye is the easy part, they get it. The eye is almond shaped. Great! Connecting their knowledge with their tiny hands is the difficult part. I walked around with a pencil and eraser to help them out- drawing boundaries, helping to erase, drawing dots to help with size, etc. The goal was to create a gentle curve above the eye, like below.
We stopped to look at a poster of The False Mirror and I pointed out the canthus, which I just refer to as the tear duct because they're five and six, and the upper and lower lids. After I demonstrate on the board they add the lids and canthus to their paper. Once everything looks to be in place they trace the pencil lines in Sharpie.
With the lids traced we can move on to skin color. They can choose a random skin color or they can try to match it to their skin which allows for a deeper connection to the art. I choose some colors that I think may work for me. On the back of my paper I color a couple of swatches and lay my arm down. Comparing my swatches to my skin, I choose the best match. I demo'd this for the kids and then proceeded to color everything but the white of the eyes. I let them work on this part.
The last step is to add the shadows around the creases of the lids. Referring back to The False Mirror poster I had students point out where they saw shadow. I chose crayons that were a few shades darker than the skin tone I originally used. To make things simple for the tiny humans, shadow was only added around the eye and not on the whites of the eyes. I really loved this part because the personality of each student really shines in this step.
It took us two classes to complete this project but I'm sure it would take less with older children. LOVE the way these turned out- it’s such a a great lesson!