Students in Color & Design class were challenged to create a painting that illustrated a fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm using only silhouettes. The students researched the stories and chose one that they found interesting (link to website with stories). After deciding on a story, the students identified the plot, main characters, setting, mood, and moral. They painted the sky with acrylic paint on canvas board using blending techniques before moving on to the silhouettes. Completing sketches helped the students to plan how they would create a sense of depth in their artwork by including foreground, middle ground, and background elements. The students then completed the silhouettes using black paint to tell the fairy tale.
After the paintings were complete, the class began working with calligraphy. The challenged for this assignment was to create an illuminated letter and an original font that reflected the mood of their story. Many of the students had never worked with calligraphy pens and ink before making practice activities extremely important to their success. They carefully created titles for their stories using their original fonts and also signed their artwork with the calligraphy pens.
To close out the unit, the students created a complete “page” of their fairy tale using Photoshop. This included their illustration, title, and name, along with the qr code that links out to the story of their choice. Overall, I am very proud of their work and I hope they are proud of themselves too.