You've Got to Move It, Move It

 

Keith Haring was a subway artist whose lively characters are still popular today. Fifth graders learned about his life and then did two projects inspired by his work. Their learning target for these lessons was "I can recognize positive and negative space in an artwork."

The first lesson was a group mural. We reviewed how to draw people in proportion and students drew a contour line of a person in action on cardstock. They cut out their people and used craypas to color around their shape: the negative space. Students repeated their shape several times on two murals.

The next project was about recognizing positive space. Students looked at more of Keith Haring's work and noticed how, in order to have action all around, he actually had active people on all four sides. In order to achieve a similar look, students were asked to turn their papers as they drew to create action all over. This time they added color to the figures: the positive space. They had fun adding the "action" lines. I think the results get you moving!