Thursday, February 10, 2011

Hockney Experiment









If you've been following my blog for a while you know I'm a big fan of David Hockney and have done several projects based on his photo collages. This time I decided to let my 3rd thru 5th graders take charge of the whole process. Each student had the opportunity to be the photographer. They divided into pairs and took pictures of different facial features at varied perspectives and ranges. (They were given a max of 10 shots). Some children chose to change facial expressions during their shoot to add another dimension. Yesterday they were given the photos of their own face to manipulate and create a cubist photo collage. Some children chose to keep their faces very coherent while others liked more of a disjointed collage. As you can imagine, there was a lot of laughter with this project(our final project of the 6 week art session).

8 comments:

  1. These are CRAZY cute!! I bet they loved that project.

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  2. OOPS I just tired to post a comment and I think my computer ate it...

    Let's try again!

    This is absolutely FABULOUS! WOW! I love David Hockney but never knew how to interpret him with kids. I love this lesson. But 2 questions:

    1)How did you know who's face was who to give them back? (I would think the features if out of context might be hard to identify)

    How long did it take you to print all these photos? It seems like it must have been a massive chore for you, especially with 3 grade levels. How many kids in the grades you did this lesson with?

    Thanks, Phyl

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  3. Thanks Phyl,

    This lesson was only possible since I teach small private after school classes with a max of 10 students (in a comically small space).
    So given that very vital piece of info(which for some reason I thought people knew), probably puts this project into better perspective.So when I say 3rd-5th - I had 10 kids in the class, a few from each grade.
    I have done Hockney projects in the past with me as photographer(check out my older posts). It can be done with only 4 shots per child. I got double prints so each child would make their own cubist portrait and we'd mix up the other copies so each child could create their own mixed-up kid. They love this.

    This project could be tweaked to work with larger groups.And prints can be found quite inexpensive online and at discount stores.

    Hope this helps Phyl!

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  4. that looks like a fun project! lots of happy distorted kid faces. I will have to try that with mine.

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  5. I'm sure I knew about your after-school teaching situation, but I'm reading so many blogs these days I tend to forget. Anyhow, if I could manage my time better I'd love to find the time to do this project - I just love the results! Thanks.

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  6. This is a great project! I would love to be able to do this with my 3rd graders sometime in the future. Thanks for sharing!

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  7. Great art project.
    What an excellent way to teach children about collage and cubism.

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  8. Great project! Thank You for sharing.

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