Shepard Fairey Painting I Assignment:
Students will be creating a Shepard Fairey style portrait or image communicating a social issue or phobia. The image must have an emotional connection to you. The communication must be obvious to the viewer. The use of symbolism will be an important element to your final piece. The requirements for the final work are as follows:
17.5x 23 inches in size
Created in the style of Shepard Fairey: using textures, collage, overlapping and layering stencils, sprayed textures into the background, minimum of 4 and have strong communication based on a social issue, phobia or portrait.
Materials:
17.5 x 23 inch drawing paper
Spray paint
Pencil
Sketchbook
textures
wall paper
Newspaper and other collage materials
Time frame:
4 weeks
Resources:
https://www.pinterest.com/dollymix03/social-issue-graffiti-vs-urban-art/
Worksheets:
Essential questions:
What do you feel passionate about?
What issue do you want to bring light to?
What do you want to tell the world about your issue and how will you communicate it in a way we understand?
How will you use symbolism to make your communication obvious to the viewer?
Learning Targets:
Students will learn to use their art to communicate about an issue in their culture or a phobia of personal connection.
Students will learn how to design an image using the medium of collage and spraypaint.
Students will learn how to use symbolism in their art.
Students will learn how to design using texture, shape and pattern.
Directions if you are doing a portrait of some kind in your final. You can use these same steps to stylize an object you would like to simplify for creating a stencil.
Step 1: Bring in or take a photograph of yourself or someone else. You may project the image to create your own stencil or you can use photoshop first to stylize or simplify the portrait. Open photoshop by going to the desktop of your computer, go to start, and then run...type in photoshop hit enter.
When photoshop opens, go to File>open>go to the drive you have saved your photo in and click on it. The file should open on the screen. Go to the layers tab on the right side of the screen and click on it if you can not see your image layer. Your picture should show up with the word background next to it. Double click on this layer and make a duplicate layer. Alter the copy as you see fit with filters or image adjustments to create the desired stencil look you are wanting.
Posterize and threshold can be found under image>adjustments> posterize or threshold
You may want to add the poster edges filter on top of your threshold adjustment. Go to filter>artistic>poster edges. You may also play with the other filters to see if they create an interesting stencil design.
You can print off the picture and use the projector to enlarge your stencil onto a piece of paper. You can use this drawing as a template to cut out your face from the plastic film on the middle table to create a stencil or from another piece of the drawing paper.
Textures, pattern, and stencils
Much of Shepard’s work is a mix of torn paper, patterns-large, medium, and small created with spray paint. Your goal is to create a background with multiple textures, one created by you. The others can be created using wallpaper patterns, brushes created in photoshop, or creating your own all by cutting out the patterns using an exacto knife. I also have textures in a box on the cart. You may also use stamps and ink to create textures.
Layer your torn paper and stencils and use contrasting colors. Make sure you create a color scheme and repeat it on top of your portrait stencil. The portrait can be spray painted on or created by cutting out a portrait from a another piece of paper, decorating and painting it, and then gluing it onto your textured and layered background.
Work of Artist Shepard Fairey
Student work by Brianna Cole
