CAHTS Students Study Grid Art and Chuck Close

Students in Ms. Reyes' STEAM Class have embarked on an exciting new pen and ink drawing project using animals, the grid art enlargement method, and the inspiration of living and contemporary American artist, Chuck Close.

As Ms. Reyes recently explained to these STEAM students, using a mathematical grid is one of the easiest ways for an artist to enlarge any image by hand.  First one creates a grid over a selected image.  Then one enlarges the grid while maintaining the proportions.  This second grid is placed over a larger blank paper that will eventually become the finished artwork.  "When art teachers grid, measure, and draw, we use geometry," Erica Gibbons writes in the December 2014 issue of School Arts on p. 8.*

To begin this project each student selected an image of an animal of his or her choice.  The student was then required to research the characteristics of the animal and document the information into his or her writing journal.  Characteristics included its physical makeup and structure, its place in the food web, and the environment in which it lives.  Special attentionwas paid to any unique textures of the animal's skin, fur or hair,as these would be reproduced in the artwork.  Next students printed out an image of this selected animal from the computer.  Math skills were then needed to lay down the first and second grids carefully.

STEAM students learned that, "Fifteenth century artists wanted to find a way of being able to record the natural world more accurately, so they invented a number of different machines to help them draw what was in front of them. Leon Battista Alberti, 1404 - 1472, wrote the first general treatise Della Pittura on the laws of perspective in 1435. Alberti's Frame was the name of the most successful of the drawing devices invented. This drawing machine is made up of a square wooden frame, across which horizontal and vertical threads are stretched at regular intervals to form a grid. A foot or so in front of this gridded frame is a rod, the same height as the distance from the bottom of the frame to the middle of the grid. This rod is important because, by lining up the eye with the rod and the centre of the grid, the eye is always fixed in the same position when looking at things."  LINK

     In addition, students researched and learned about the living American artist, Chuck Close, who uses the grid extensively and from his wheelchair to make his large scale artworks.  In one of the many videos Close has placed on Youtube, the artist explains that when he was growing up, no one in education recognized his learning disability.  Close has difficulty in the way his eye perceives the three dimensional world.  Thus he developed and still uses the grid method of enlargement to help him to break down the large image into smaller, more manageable pieces.  He further explains how his painting is much like writing.  LINK

     Thus these STEAM students realized they were not alone in facing the daunting task of making a small image larger (or vice-versa) with a small artistic tool such as their pens.  Their capacity to struggle with their new medium was also inspired by Close's methods.  Pen and ink drawing is a slow labor of love and Ms. Reyes was there every step of the way to help the students.

     Students were asked to comment on their experiences. 
     Samantha said "sometimes the pen gets a little stuck on the paper and the ink goes everywhere."

     Yvenide said "it is easy to make a mistake.  You have to be very careful but I like the challenge."

     Katherine said, "It's a lot of work but the effect is worth it!"

Mr. Reyes commented that she is, "impressed that the students are working so well with pen and ink even thought this is the first time working with this medium."






* School Arts