Lesson video

- Hello, my name is Mrs. Minicucci and this is part two of the Frida Kahlo lesson on narrative and storytelling through portraiture and collage.

So for part one of the lesson, we've already created a myself portrait, a drawing using just pencil.

And now we're going to add to that to add more to our narrative, to more to our personal story.

You'll need some equipment for this lesson.

And that is the drawing that you had for the previous lesson.

We did kind of very simple line drawing with a little bit of tone and definition.

You'll need that.

You'll also need magazines.

You can have the magazines that come with a Sunday paper, any old or used magazines, or you can also use images from the recycling.

So all of these circulars that you get through your door, you can use those.

Don't throw anything away because everything is useful for collage.

And then finally you'll need a pair of scissors and a glue stick.

If you don't have a glue stick, then you can use any kind of glue, even flour and water make a good substitute for glue.

Okay.

So just collect those resources, pause the video, and then resume once you have them.

Okay.

So now you have your resources.

We're ready to start the lesson.

The first thing we, hopefully you would have done the intro quiz to the lesson so that you can find out a few fun facts.

And then we are going to recap on the previous lesson, and then we're going to look at how you can add to your story.

So how you can tell a little bit about yourself, about your own narrative, about your identity, about your personal story through collage.

And then we are going to create your own collage and in the style of Frida Kahlo's work using Frida Kahlo's work as inspiration.

And then hopefully you can end with the exit quiz.

So some of the keywords that we'll be using in this lesson are narrative.

So narrative is another, it's another way of saying a telling someone's story.

So it's a personal account of your life.

So it's just another way of saying storytelling.

We are then going to use the word portraiture.

So a portrait is a true likeness of someone and that likeness can be done either by a drawing, a painting or a photograph.

Then we're going to refer to the word composition.

So composition is another word of composing an image arranging an image so that it's composed well, so that you.

It's the way that you bring everything together in the image.

And finally, we're going to use the word collage.

So a collage is a way of creating a piece of artwork using lots of images.

So these images can be printed images from a magazine, or they can be photographs, your own photographs, or sometimes they can be shapes and other images.

And they are usually a way of arranging these shapes, images, colleges, or photographs, and then they could be arranged either onto a piece of paper or onto a piece of fabric.

So in this particular lesson, we're going to arrange everything onto a piece of paper and we'll be making a paper collage.

So first things first for the previous lesson, we looked at Frida Kahlo.

We found a little bit about her, a little bit of information, and she was an artist.

She was born in 1907.

Through her lifetime, she created lots and lots of self-portraits and these were for various reasons.

In total, she created around 55 self-portraits using paint and, you know, usually using oil paint and she created these images and she had all of these things around her within her painting.

So she had the animals that she liked.

She had lots of cats and monkeys that she had in real life and she used those within her paintings.

These were animals that made her feel really happy.

So she had those around her.

So of course she included those in her portraits.

She also had lots of nature, lots of trees, flowers, butterflies, birds, and lots of these animals and creatures were in her paintings because they related to hope or signs of joy and hope.

So she created those and she had those with her within her paintings, just to allude to that hope and joy and, you know, kind of happy things, joyful things.

And then she also had, you can see in this particular portrait, she had an image of a hummingbird, which was another symbol for hope.

And then she also had these thorns around her, which signified the pain that she was in.

And she was in a lot of pain.

As we said in the previous lesson because she, first of all, she contracted polio when she was younger.

And then also she had an accident which meant that she couldn't really move and around her torso she was in a lot of pain.

So that's why these, you know, this particular image had the thorn into, you know, to symbolise that pain.

And she also told her lots of personal stories about love and happiness and lots of different things that were happening through her life.

And it's like all of her story, all of her narrative was included in a single painting.

So just a little fun fact for you.

So do you think that Frida Kahlo included lots of images, lots of mythical creatures? So mythical means images from fairytales or, you know, those kinds of things.

So the images that were not real.

And the answer is false because of course she included real life animals, you know, cats, monkeys, birds, butterflies.

So images that, you know, that could have been seen in real life.

So what we're going to do now, we are going to add images to our portraits from the last lesson.

So we have these portraits and we created just a very simple line drawing.

As I said earlier, just with a little bit of tone.

And we built up on these images to make them, you know, more realistic and more like us.

So now we're going to add to those.

So the first thing that you need to do is collect lots of images from these magazines and circulars and little bits from the recycling that reflect you and your identity.

So your interests, your hobbies, images of people that you admire, animals that you love, buildings that you love, maybe images from your holidays or images from buildings that around you, you might have images of your own home, your local church, or your place of worship, or, you know, the shops that you frequent or anything that you like that reflects you and your personality.

You just need to cut those out of magazines, or you can tear them out if you don't have scissors, or you might want to tear them out because you like that look.

Some of my images I cut and the edges are kind of quite angular quite straight, and I wish that I'd torn them them out.

So any, just get all of these images and I would say to cut around 20 images should be enough.

And I would just make sure that the size of those images is kind of no larger than the palm of your hand.

Otherwise, we're working with A4 piece of paper.

If there are any larger than that, there might be too big for the collage.

So I've generally, I would say that sort of, you know, that sort of size.

So here's my images.

I've got 20 to 25 small images from magazines and they can range in size from the size of a pound coin, as I said, no bigger than your, the palm of your hand.

So I've got a demonstration for you to watch and what I've done with this demonstration, I have arranged different compositions within the work and I've tried out different ways of arranging these images around the face.

And I just tested it out to see what would work.

So I've arranged these images around the piece of work, and then I've just tried out different compositions, different arrangements of the images so that I can see which one looks best.

Watch the demonstration and then you might want to watch it a few times just so you can get a good idea of what to do and then resume once you've finished.

So here's the collage.

And what I'll do I'll just place the different components over the top, just to see how it looks.

This is not the final collage, but I'm just gonna experiment with placing things on top of each other to see how they look.

So this will be an experiment with several compositions, moving things around until I feel happy with what I have.

It might take a few attempts.

So just have fun with this.

So you have got a lot of different things.

Plants, flowers, friends, books, vegetables, eat your vegetables children.

They're very good for you.

Trainers.

I love trainers.

That cake I think is too big.

Lots of flowers, plants, I think I'll put that up there.

Candles.

I love candles.

I think I'm gonna keep my composition to the top.

I'll put another trainer there.

Let's see, some more food over here.

Some more food here.

More clothing.

I'll put that dress there.

Put this head down a little bit.

Yeah.

Let's see.

Got books.

So I have to have books there because I'm always reading.

So I put another book.

Can't really see that book.

So I pull it down a little bit.

I'll put another book here slightly underneath here.

And then travel.

I love travel.

So travel has to be there.

A mobile phone.

I always have my phone.

I will put another book here into the other one.

And then I think I will add some flowers over here and then I'll put my afro comb a little bit of makeup.

I'll put over the camera.

And symbol of vegetables and a quote.

I don't know if that goes, so I leave those off, but I leave those two off.

I will perhaps take a photograph of that to see how it is.

I think I like more crowned features at the top.

So I'll move things around a little bit.

I think I'm gonna take the veg off.

More food.

I put my friend on the top I think.

I don't like those straight edges so.

Yeah.

I think I'm pretty happy with that.

So here are a few of my compositions where I've tested out different ways of arranging all of the images around the different around my face.

And I've just tried some of them, they look too cluttered.

Some of them, they had too much space.

And then I just experimented until I felt very comfortable with the composition that I had.

Once you have a composition that you like, there's another demonstration that you can watch here.

And just pause to watch the demonstration.

You may want to watch it a few times just to be comfortable.

Once you're happy with the composition, take a photograph of that composition and then you can glue things down.

So here is my final portrait with a collage.

After a few compositions, I was able to find a composition that I was happy with.

Then I was able to glue things down.

Now I'm going to do a very quick review, just a very simple review using what I think went well and what would be even better if.

So I think that I've added lots of images that I'm interested in.

I've got lots of clothing, I've got trainers.

I love trainers.

I've got lots of books, I've got flowers of plants, and I've just arranged them around the portrait in a way that I was very comfortable with.

It's not too cluttered.

I don't think there are too many images.

I didn't use all the images that I had.

I just made an arrangement and see what I thought fitted best and then I left it.

So yeah, I thought that I think that I've got a great composition and the portrait can still be seen so I'm quite happy with that.

Even better if I think that I need to add a little bit more tone to the drawing.

But that's my personal thing.

So I would probably go over the pencil marks a little bit more, making sure that I darkened it a little bit because the flowers and all of the objects and the trees and the clothes, they kind of bring a vibrancy to it.

So it does have a contrast between the, you know, the pencil being quite light and then the colours being quite vibrant.

So overall, I think I'm very happy with it.

So I think that I might add a little bit more tone, but overall I'm very happy.

I had fun with it and that's the most important thing and I've learnt new skills.

So thank you for learning with Oak Academy and I will see you next time.

Thank you.