Face It I M Angry

Face it – I’m angry!

A case study of children exploring portraiture through observational drawings and using these as a source for papier-mâché sculpture

© Steve Pratchett (2006)

A 10-year-old boy’s drawing of his angry face / Steve Pratchett (Senior Lecturer in Art & Design at the College of St MarkSt John) reports on his drawing faces project with 10-11 year-old children at ManfordPrimary School, in Hainault, Essex.
As part of the project, children:

• refine their observation of faces portraying a variety of emotions;
• develop skills in using line, tone and texture to communicate feelings;
• question their preconceptions of art as solely a search for realism and “good likeness”;
• respond to portraits by Degas of singers and dancers in the footlights;
• develop their emotional literacy by using drawing to explore their communication of feelings.

Observing

"Learning to draw is really a matter of learning to see…..Through learning to draw, children learn to look, and they need to look with specific intent to be able to draw well. A great deal of the curriculum is given to the development of speaking and listening, but looking skills are overlooked. In order that drawing can be developed to the highest quality, children have to learn how to focus their whole attention on whatever it is they are drawing. Through this they will find that the longer and more concentrated the focus of attention, the more they will see………Learning to look carefully at the subject you are drawing is as important as, if not more important than, learning to use different media and rules about proportions. We need to help children to draw what they see, not what they think they see. Children need help with knowing what to look for, in their subject and their drawings, and what to do about what they see." (Fabian 2005: 58)

The children were given a mirror each and put into pairs with the challenge to closely observe their own and each other’s faces when expressing the emotions of anger, sadness, happiness and fear. This was not only a good exercise in refining observational skills but also in mime and drama. Many changes in the human face when it expresses emotion are universal but there are also subtle differences in the way people use their facial muscles to express themselves which are unique to each individual. It was important to refine the children’s observations of changes, similarities and differences in each other’s faces by questioning, describing and discussion during this ‘look, look and look again’ phase.

Observational Drawing

This dialogue with the teacher continued during the drawing phase that followed as they looked at themselves in mirrors.

“The importance of talking – describing, questioning, discussing – as support for drawing cannot be overemphasised. It is through talk as much as through looking that children come to see the world about them more clearly and perceptively.Talk can be used in a variety of ways, the simplest being the way that a series of questions associated with looking can help children to see and select what is before them.

(Clement 1988:114)

The teacher’s questions encouraged children to examine, analyse and describe the shape of an eyebrow, the number and linear movement of wrinkles on the bridges of noses and foreheads, the narrowing and widening of eyelids, the flaring of nostrils, the shape formed by lips, the exposure of teeth, etc. Without careful and directed questions, such detail can go unnoticed. The emphasis was on spending as much interspersed time looking as drawing. When the children had finished their drawings of their angry, happy, sad and frightened faces, they were ‘rewarded’by being given licence to pull the rudest face they could at the teacher and then observed this in a mirror and record the result!

Drawings by a 10-year-old girl of her angry, sad, happy, frightened and rude face

Angry / Sad / Frightened
Happy / Rude

Emotional Literacy

“Children can use drawing to develop emotional intelligence, to focus on their inner world” (Adams & Baynes 2002:14)

Links were made with literacy and the development of emotional intelligence by asking the children to mount each of their portraits in a zig-zag book alongside its own written commentary as follows:

What happens to my face when it is angry?
(mouth, eyes, eyebrows, nose, forehead, cheeks, chin)
What things make me feel angry?
What do I do when I am angry?
What do Ido to control my anger?

There are lots of resources to support this workon the DfES National Primary Strategy website for social and emotional aspects to learning (SEAL), for example over 140 photographs of different facial expressions with accompanying such guidance materials for their use as, “If you feel like that what would your face look like? (encourage them to show you either by modeling or drawing).”Emotional literacy has an interpersonal and an intrapersonal element. Through observing, drawing and reflecting on faces showing emotion, children are learning to ‘read’/interpret the facial expressions of others and empathise with what feelings lie behind these expressions, as well as appreciating what their own faces are communicating to others.

“The significance of emotional literacy reflects a growing concern that schooling has focused almost exclusively on academic and behavioural aspects and neglected the emotional aspects that are intrinsically linked to learning and behaviour.” (Faupel & Sharp 2003:1)

Critical response and appreciation

The Art & Design National Curriculum is not just about making but also understanding art and design, which involves children appreciating and critically responding to their own and others’ work. The teacher selected two children’s series of portraits and arranged them in two rows, one above the other. (see below).

A murmur went up “Cor, he’s the best drawer in the class…he’s the best in the school…. You can see it’s him….” etc. They were referring to the top row where the child clearly displays great skill in realism and achieving a ‘good likeness’. The row below did not get a mention so the teacher set about challenging the children’s narrow perception of ‘the best artist being the one who can get closest to a photographic likeness’ by drawing the children’s attention to such features which the camera cannot reproduce such as distortion, the exaggeration in the distance eyebrows have been raised, eyes widened, mouth dropped and face elongated in the drawing of fear. In the top row the child has recorded every minute detail but the one in the bottom row has been selective in what to include and what to leave out and used different qualities of line to dramatise expression. This was not to deny the quality of the work in the top row, particularly the skilful use of tonal shading, but it depends on the challenge set and the criteria for making aesthetic judgments. If the challenge was to achieve as close a likeness as possible, then the top row has been more successful. However, if the challenge (as indeed it was) was to communicate powerful feelings then the use of distortion, exaggeration, selectivity and the vigorous use of line have been more successful. Another fruitful avenue for discussion with the children is the difference in style between the two artists; one is a linear drawer, the other a tonal drawer.

/ Finally, a third ‘entry’ was added to the display of work, namely, the wood cut of ‘The Cry’ By Edvard Munch (1895) This gave further endorsement to the child responsible for the bottom row by showing how another artist had used the same techniques of exaggeration, distortion, elongation and line to achieve a sickly scream of fear.

Drawing as part of the re-visitingreviewing and re-working process

“Drawing can act as an aide-memoire, keeping a trace of experience, so that something is held in the memory for longer to be recalled at a later date…Drawing reinforces experience, and at the same time, holds a trace of this for future use. Drawing enables the child to re-visit certain experiences, to review and re-work them in order to create meaning. Drawing can help children to recall the experience and elaborate on it.””

(Adams & Baynes 2003: 10)

The children re-visited their observational drawings for review and re-working in anensuing lesson through the malleable 3D medium of papier-mâché pulp. The drawing itself, plus the ordering of sensations, feelings, ideas and thoughts,became the ‘research’ upon which the children then explored facial emotions using the aesthetic vocabulary of form.

/ → /
/ → /

Notice that the boy’s re-working of the drawing in papier-mâché is very literal, whereas the girl’s is a more expressive in its interpretation, particularly in the use of ‘colour mood’ to express /feeling.

Standing in the footlights

“The attraction lies not in showing the source of the light but in showing its effects.” (Edgas Degas 1834-1917)

‘Café Concert Singer’
(Degas 1875)
Pastel & mixed media on canvas
The FoggArt Museum /
‘The Song of the Dog’
(Degas about 1876-77)
Pastel & gouache on monotype
Private collection /
‘The Green Singer’
(Degas about 1884)
Pastel on blue paper
New York, The metropolitan Museum of Art
Examples of some of the Degas oil pastels shown to the children
These pictures are available in Bernd Growe (1994) Degas. Cologne: Benedikt Taschen.

The children were shown some examples of pastel drawings by Degas of singers and ballet dancers standing in the footlights. The faces of these subjects are lit from below;an unusual visual experience that is exploited to effect in the theatre. Degas was fascinated by the glare of footlights falling on ballet dancers and singers set against the rich shadows on a dark stage. Because the direction of the light falling on the face is from an unusual/unfamiliar direction, it can convey disturbing feelings such as strangeness, eeriness, mysteriousness and threat. This is particularly true if the eyes are unlit and disappear within the darkness of the eye socket.Rather than copying the artist’s work, children discussed his use of tone and then a child sat on a stool with a torch under the chin in a blacked out classroom for an observational drawing activity using white oil pastels on black sugar paper.

“There is a narrow distinction between copying and ‘working in the style’ of an artist. UK classrooms and corridors are not short of copied Picasso portraits, Monet water gardens and Van Gogh sunflowers or ‘Starry Night’. There is nothing wrong with working from these artists’ ideas, but plenty to suggest that copying can limit artistic outcomes. ….the more creative act is to transfer some of this knowledge to original artwork and add something new.” (Barnes 2002: 179)

Children were encouraged to observe by narrowing their eyes to slits which emphasized the contrast between dark and light tones and to note the shapes made by the areas of light. By doing this they noticed that parts of the contour of the head disappeared tomerge and became one with the pool of darkness behind.

“Children tend to make inaccuracies when drawing heads and faces, The eyes are drawn too high, necks tend to be too narrow and the hairline starts to high up the head.” (Fabian 2005:122)

In these drawings in the torchlight you can see the children have been taught a valuable skill of using feint ‘working lines’ (oval, horizontal and vertical) to plan out the head shape, facial proportions and position of features. They have kept these lines feint to allow for adjustment and modification as the drawing progresses. Such ‘working lines’ can often be seen in artists; finished work as a record of the process of ‘feeling their way’ towards the final position of a line.

References

Adams, E., & Baynes, B. Start Drawing. Corsham: NSEAD & Drawing Power The Campaign for Drawing

Adams, E., & Barnes., B. Notebooks. Corsham: NSEAD & Drawing Power The Campaign for Drawing

Barnes, R. (2002) Teaching art to Young Children 4-9 (Second Edition). London: Routledge & Falmer.

Bernd Growe (1994) Degas. Cologne: Benedikt Taschen.

Clement, R. (1988) The Art Teacher’s Handbook. Cheltenham: Stanley Thornes.

DfES Website ‘Excellence & Enjoyment: social and emotional aspects of learning:

Fabian, M. (2005) Drawing is a Class Act.5-6.Edlesborough: Brilliant Publications

Faupel & Sharp (2003) Promoting Emotional Literacy: Guidelines for Schools, Local Authorities and Health Services. Southampton: Southampton City Council SELIG.