Adventures In Art: Challenge 15

Welcome back to Week 15 of the MG Virtual Art Club. Over the past weeks we have had some amazing art in from our talented bunch of artists. Last week they all got creative with the theme of BLUE. If you haven't caught the exhibition yet just click here:

https://artatmg.blogspot.com/2020/06/blue-monday-exhibition.html

This week it is a brand new challenge -

We Can Be Heroes - the title of which is inspired by one of our real life musical heroes, David Bowie.

So what does the word 'hero' mean to you? Is it:

someone you look up to and admire for their achievements (political, sporting, cultural....)
someone you know
everyday heroes
superheroes
if you could be a hero
.......or something else entirely?

Whatever you choose might involve you drawing a figure of some sort, so further down this page we are going to do some practice on that, but here is the key artist we will be looking at this week.

Kehinde Wiley

He is one of our favourite contemporary portrait artists, who is perhaps most famous for his painting of many people's real life hero - Barack Obama.

One of the key things we love about his work, is the fact that he is not only a fantastic portrait painter, but the way he incorporates the background into his paintings.
He himself is inspired by a very local Walthamstow hero in the way he does this - William Morris himself!

"I took the DNA of William Morris and created hybrids" - Kehinde Wiley

While growing up in Los Angeles in the 1980s, the Nigerian-American artist Kehinde Wiley discovered the work of the 19th Century British textile designer, writer and social reformer.

Before Lockdown there was an exhibition of Kehinde Wiley's work on at our local William Morris Gallery - hopefully they will have extended it, so try and get to see it with your family if you can - it's all free and wonderful.

He doesn't just paint famous people, he also paints everyday heroes.

His portraits in the William Morris Gallery feature everyday heroes, a variety of women from Hackney.

Now before we look at some other ideas and examples to inspire you with this week's challenge, it's time to practise drawing figures.

For our younger Art Clubbers here is a fantastic YouTube video that Mrs Cartwright found to help you practise.

Meanwhile, for our older Art Clubbers we're going to practise drawing figures in proportion.

First grab yourself a piece of A4 paper and have it in front of you in portrait mode.

Fold it down the middle, then cut along the fold, so you end up with two practice thin pieces of paper.

Fold the paper in half, then half again, then again, so when you unfold it you have 8 sections.

The human body is roughly formed of these

8 sections, each the size of your head.

Number each section on the fold as shown.

In section 1 draw your head in the middle.

Now jump down to section 4 and draw the middle of your body, with 2 hip joints either side. Draw a line up from this to your head.

Now go down to section 6, your knees sit on this fold directly under your hips. Add your feet to the bottom edge of the paper.

On to your upper body - this starts just below your number 1 fold (to allow room for your neck) and ends just before the 3rd fold. It is roughly your ribcage area.

Time for the shoulders! All the small circles are joints (the bits that allow our bones to move).

Your elbow joints rest on fold 3 (as does your tummy button!), while your wrists are at 4. Join all these joints up and add your hand shape, nearly down to fold 5.

Double check that you've got things in the right place.

Using the inner stickman as a guide you can now pad out your figure. Straight away I can see that my head needs to be wider, but the length of my body is roughly correct.

Now for something spicier, which will ensure you get the width as well as the length better proportioned.

Again get your thin strip of paper, fold it into 8 sections and label it with the numbers on the folds.

This time you are going to fill out the different parts of the body using key shapes in each section. Start with the head in section 1.

Add the different body shapes in each section. This time you are being more accurate, some shapes going just above or just below the fold lines. All the little circles still represent the joints.

Finally, use the frame you have drawn to pad out your figure.

Now you have practised drawing figures

you have to think what HERO

you are going to portray!

But the thing we'd really like you to think about is also doing a background for your figure. If you decide you want to be a superhero make sure you have a background - for example the sky or a city:

Instead of yourself, you could invent a superhero - maybe one to fight the Coronavirus, like Kacper did last week!

Here at MG Art Club we are big fans of street art and since Covid 19 there has been a lot of great art celebrating our NHS heroes.

...and of course Captain Tom

You may want to focus on comic superheroes. Des, a teacher friend of MG Art Club loves all things Marvel and tries to do daily pencil sketches of various superheroes.

You could of course represent such comic book superheroes in a completely different way - by their logos alone or by simple images that make them instantly reconisable

Finally you may just want to portray one of your own heroes - someone you really admire - maybe from the world of sport, music, films, literature, art, science, maths, history etc... or maybe someone far closer to home - a member of your family, a teacher, someone local.

There are everyday superheroes all around us and they don't always wear a cape!

BUT REMEMBER......BACKGROUND!

Nelson Mandela is a real modern day hero - look at the way he has been portraited here, all with different colourful backgrounds, reflecting the 'Rainbow Nation'.

As part of this week's challenge we are looking for you to do a background for your hero portrait.
You don't have to do a full figure, it can just be a face, but background is key.

We'll leave you where we started with

David Bowie and his lyric

'We can be heroes, just for one day'.

David Bowie is one of Ms Harding's heroes so she did a small painting of him.