Day 1 of Contemporary Art Series Camp: Chuck Close Fingerprint Paintings

Chuck Close is one of my favorite Contemporary artists! I wanted to be able to show the summer session 2 kids artworks that varied in medium and technique so what better way to showcase these skills than by using Chuck Close's fingerprint portraits. My original idea was to have students create self-portraits of themselves and then using black ink, go back over different areas of their face using their fingerprints. Though, I think I was thinking way too big for a group of 4 - 8 year olds who all have completely different skill sets. So, instead, we opted to do more of an abstracted image of a flower and vase. 

Before we began the art lesson, I introduced the students to the artist of the day. I exclaimed to them who Chuck Close was and what kind of art he did. The kids seemed to enjoy looking at his finger print portraits. In fact, most couldn't even tell that it was a painting because it looked so much like a photograph! This is when we started talking about photo realism and how photo illusions come into play from this type of art style. The students even seemed to enjoy that the artist was still living and still creating artwork, despite his disability. To even help students remember this artist, I explained to them how Chuck Close created works that were very large in size so he would have to sit in front of his paintings and *CLOSELY* paint his artworks. Chuck Close painted CLOSE up. :-) 

The kids were excited to paint in the vase of flowers using simple colors. It was really easy for them to start this process since the shapes were very much abstracted and simple enough for them to paint in. 

Next, we gave the students a variety of colors and demonstrated how to appropriately dip in their pointer fingers into the paint and *DAB* their fingers all throughout their painting. This process was interesting to watch because you could tell which students were the more neat and meticulous ones and who were the messier ones. The boys seemed to be the more messy, in this case. Some students chose to create their fingerprint marks in a very fast manner using a lot of paint to the point where their fingerprints were hard to see. In these instances, we had to come over and demonstrate to them how to dip their fingers. 

Once we were done with our masterpieces, we examined our works. I explained to the students how the flower vase was hard to see up close because the fingerprints cast an unusual illusion up close. However, once students backed up from their works they could see a hint of the flower vase! This is what photo realism is all about. 

All in all, it was a good day to study Chuck Close!