Painting By Other Means

The painting session meant to train the student to think of the painting artwork not only as 2 dimensional canvas on the wall, but also as a 3 dimensional concept that give form and essence of specific place.

Many objects could be used to express that concept such as cardboard boxes, container and objects that belongs to specific places and time.

Cardboard, boxes and old suit cases evoke a certain symbol to our life and play a part to explore and play with. For such, all the class agree to make that conceptual painting by using a cardboard boxes of different shapes and size.

We decide to give the box an identity that will indicate and symbolize certain meaning for every individual. One may think of his box as his private room, home, house, memory, safe, storage of some sort of belongings.

The fun part of using the box as shape to paint is being able to use the inner and the outer beside parts of its sides as well. I start the workshop by conducting a series of charcoal drawings, portraits and objects on paper to learn the students some powerful tools of drawing skills which will be used as key inspiration element in their painting.

From the scratch of these drawings we place them to the cardboard inner and outer surface making designs out of them all together. Cutting and pasting parts of the drawings, gluing pieces of one drawing to another give the student an image of composing as the main part of the whole concept which lead them to focus on the whole work and not only to the pieces they create.

My 15 minutes demonstration was quite enough to pump the energy and to deliver a dynamic message for the students to respond and start making their own artwork. The game to play with the charcoal drawings, pieces of cut and past glued to the board surface, paints of maroon, white and splashes of white with strong brush touches and texture; turn the final artwork to unexpected form of art composition.

Many of the students didn't realize what is going on and what could be the power of doing the painting that way. Some of them ask questions to understand and finally they learn that art making is about to play and focus on the design process of using their elements and principles that have been taught to them at the art class.

Each one pick up his own box and size and began to re-shape and re-design the individual ones. 

I comment ' that is exactly what the culture connect project is all about. To re-design and re-shape the individual experience, story and background and bring it to a new form to express the dream and the hope of the today and the future ones '

I felt the sense of relief as every on in the class become so happy to share this uniqueness of their individual experiences and decide to trace trace this creative process in a different way. In their way.

Some of the students decide to make a collaborative artwork and sharing together at one process. It shows me that our workshop on the right track and the students will be able to use those skills further more as they come to make their final conceptual art work for the project.

Many thanks to the art teacher / Renee Hood of facilitating the workshop progress and elevating the sense of understanding and engagement among the students.

For further information about this workshop and its progress please read Renee Hood's post on that blog. 

Please visit this website Painting Gallery for more inspirations and ideas:

almadarstudio.webs.com/apps/photos/photo?photoid=4188678 

More photos and video clips of the painting workshop week will be uploaded to the blog and on the Project YouTube website soon

Thank you

Project Coordinator | Magdy Shiha