Illustrated Recipe

This was a sketchbook assignment I gave to my Grade 10 students.  They were to choose a recipe (preferably a favourite recipe they've made before) and illustrate it in whichever medium and method they wanted. I was surprised with this assignment how many students don't have favourite recipes. I'm a huge fan of the artist Wayne Thiebaud and love any art that's related to food.

Here are some of the results:



This Kulfi recipe is very delicious and easy! I've tried it!
Add  a can of mango pulp and you've got amazing mango ice cream, no ice cream maker required!



While we're on the topic of food, here's a gorgeous video I found on the Tiger in a Jar website that shows how (in a very artistic way) to make beet cake.

Watch the video below:

"There is something beautiful about the baking process. The way flour feels in your hands or the sound of eggs cracking on the edge of a bowl. Baking is a gathering of interesting materials, a mixed medium art piece of sorts, that ends in a cake instead of a canvas."

beet cake from tiger in a jar on Vimeo.

Fire Drawings: Etsuko Ichikawa

I found this gorgeous video profiling artist Etsuko Ichikawa on the Anthropologie website. She's a Japanese artist who currently works in Seattle. I was absolutely blown away by the originality and subtle beauty of these 'fire drawings'. She essentially makes "pyrographs" by painting onto paper with the fire and smoke of hot glass. Discovering her medium was, like many great discoveries, an accident. Years ago, Ichikawa was assisting a Japanese glass artist, when the glass she'd gathered for him dripped off of the pipe and onto the floor. She gasped at the beautiful mark it left on the concrete. "It was shocking, visually. Really intriguing," she says.

Watch the video below.  Visit her website for more videos and photos of her work.

Acrostic Name Poems

Roudrashini

These are acrostic name poems written by a former Grade 2 class. Most of the students in this class had English as their additional language. I designed this simple project to accompany Book Week at our school- the theme that year was "Poetry".

An acrostic poem is very easy to write. It can be about any subject. This kind of poem can be written in different ways, but the simplest form is to put the letters that spell your subject vertically, down the left side of your page. When you have done this then you go back to each letter and think of a word, phrase or sentence that starts with that letter and describes your subject. In this case, students had to think of things about themselves.

Students wrote these first in pencil, then went over them in permanent markers. They then used watercolours to paint transparent patterns over their poem. I emphasized that they needed to use alot of water to keep the colours nice and 'see through', or transparent, in order to still be able to see and read their poems.

Some of the boys who had quite short names were really happy as they figured the project would be 'easier' for them! Overall, you get some really cute and funny poems- it's amazing, really, what they think of. ('apple-eater' was a popular one as you can see- I think one girl thought of it and the rest thought it was so cool so they had to use it too- oh those Grade 2's!)



Anna-Lena



Frederik

 

Bram

 

Ankitha



Jakob



Sebastien



Louis



Iznik Tiles from Turkey

This is a very interesting video on traditional Turkish tile making I found on the cool hunting website.

A celebrated Turkish art form dormant for more than 300 years, Iznik tiles play an integral role in Turkey's Ottoman Empire history and the production of them today is a labor of love.

This video features Istanbul-based architectural historian Gökhan Karakuş, who takes us through the history and modern-day labor-intensive process of making these beautiful tiles.

I love videos that show the process of how things are made, particulary traditional art forms. It makes one appreciate handmade objects much more once they see the time, skill and energy that goes into them.



Cool Hunting Video: Iznik Tiles from Cool Hunting on Vimeo.

Foil Embossing (Repoussé)

This is a foil embossing project, known as repoussé, that I did with a Grade 11 IB class. 

It requires designing a highly detailed image onto foil and then aging it with ink.

I find that students who enjoy doing linocutting quite enjoy this process as well, as it requires patience to work with a fairly slow process with fine detail.

From Wikipedia:

Repoussé is a metalworking technique in which a malleable metal (copper, brass, aluminum, etc) is ornamented or shaped by hammering from the reverse side to create a design in low relief. Chasing is the opposite technique to repoussé, and the two are used in conjunction to create a finished piece. It is also known as embossing.

I had my students first research the art of repousse and record it in their sketchbook.  Googling words like embossing, foil embossing, metal embossing and repousse will get them the most variety of results.  They also looked at repousee from various cultures and time periods, some good examples being Bronze Greek armour plates, Assyrian, Phonecian and Etruscan art.

Here's a sketchbook page showing this student's research:

So here's how I made my sample in order to show my students the process and steps:

I found an image I wanted to emboss- in this case a matryoshka doll image from a card I had.

Draw the image onto a sheet of regular white paper the same size as your foil.

You can buy embossing foil on a roll, for example here, or in individual sheets.

Place your drawing on top of your foil and tape it down.  Place it all on a stack of newspapers (you need a soft surface) and then lightly outline your entire drawing with a dull pencil or ball point pen. How hard you press depends on the thickness of your paper and foil.  Practice on a scrap sheet first.

Once you have your image transferred, you can start embossing. Make sure you work on a stack of newspapers and use a dull pencil. Press over the lines to make them pop out more.  Try flipping over your design and doing some chasing on the back.

Then, to age it and create more dimension, you paint the foil using India ink (waterproof black ink). We simply painted it on, then wiped away some with a paper towel. The ink will stay in the recesses and make the overall design pop out more.  Experiment until you get the amount you like. 

You can also try this with acrylic paint. Once this is all dry, you can mount these onto colored paper- use rubber cement or hot glue to attach the foil- white glue doesn't seem to work.

Here's a lovely landscape scene a student made. It illustrates an excellent use of a variety of textures and surfaces: tree bark, feathers, cobblestones, roof tiles, etc. She also cut away parts of the foil.

Starting the embossing on a stack of newspapers.

Painting over the design with black ink.

Detail of the texture:

Student reflection in sketchbook:

Here's another student work- she used red ink, instead, to give a bit of a different feeling to the piece.

Stencil Portraits

This is a really popular project with high school students because the get to a) use spray paint and b) use x-acto blades! We looked at the work of one of my favourite artists, the British street artist Banksy. His work involves alot of political and social commentary and is also very humourous (dark humour). 

Banksy, "Riot Flowers"

For this project, I had students choose a portrait to make into a hand-cut stencil. They could take an original digital photo themselves or use a picture of a famous person from the internet. 

Here is a step-by-step sample I did to show everyone the process:

 Upload any photo to an online photo editing program (Fotoflexer, Pixlr, etc.) If you know how to use Photoshop, of course that works as well. 

Turn your photo first into black and white (grayscale). Then fool around and adjust the contrast until you have a super high contrast image. 

Some photo editors might have a special feature for this (ie: 'ink stamp')

Below, I used Fotoflexer: I uploaded the photo, turned it to black and white, and then applied the 'ink stamp' feature. Easy peasy!

 

    

 

So here in the photo below I just fooled around with the contrast until I was pretty happy with the look of it. Print it out full size. If your photocopier or printer takes cardstock, print it out on that so you have a nice sturdy sheet of paper. If not, just trace the image onto cardstock.

So here it is below all traced out. I like to shade in the areas that need to be black and then cut those out using an x-acto knife and a cutting mat underneath.

These blades are super sharp- I always tell a really scary 'cutting accident' story before I let any students use these knives and then do a demonstration on how to use them properly. You know your class best and I would only do this project with a class that I trusted completely with using x-actos.

Here's a good thread on safely using x-acto blades with kids- some great tips there.

                  

x-acto knife



Cutting mats



So here above is the stencil all cut out from a sheet of cardstock (it's black because I had used it already).  Because it's thick paper, it takes time and patience to cut it all out. But you can use it over and over again- it's quite sturdy. 

Now it's time to spray-paint. Do this outside, away from buildings, and in a large box to contain the over-spray. Tape your stencil down onto your good copy paper- use any colour you want.

I just buy cheap matte black spray paint at the hardware store.

Shake it really well beforehand.  

Spray a nice even coat- I spray down at the artwork lying flat so you don't get any massive drips.

You might try using a low-tack spray glue so you get all the little pieces of paper glued down; otherwise they flip up a bit and spray paint goes underneath as it did here in the hair and it's just not as clean and sharp.

So here's my finished piece. You can look at the design and then choose to mask out some areas of your stencil you don't like with masking tape, or cut more areas.

Here are some student samples- they love making these and many end up doing their own at home

with different colours.



c'mon baby light my fire...

Other hand-cut stencil examples from students in Grades 11-12: