Shepard Fairey Poster

Learning Targets:

• Students will learn to use their art to communicate about an issue in their culture or a phobia of personal connection.

• Students will learn how to design an image using the medium of collage and spraypaint.

• Students will learn how to use symbolism in their art.

• Students will learn how to design using texture, shape and pattern.

Assignment:

Students will be creating a Shepard Fairey style portrait using Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Express. The image must have an emotional connection to you.  The communication must be obvious to the viewer.  The use of symbolism will be an important element to your final piece. The requirements for the final work are as follows:

Criteria:

Created in the style of Shepard Fairey: using textures, collage, overlapping and layering stencils, sprayed textures into the background, minimum of 4 and have strong communication based on a portrait.

Directions: If you are doing a portrait, you can use these same steps to stylize an object you would like to simplify for creating a stencil.

Step 1: Bring in or take a photograph of yourself or someone else.  You can use Photoshop first to stylize or simplify the portrait.  Open Photoshop by going to the desktop of your computer, going to Start, and then running... typing in Photoshop and hitting Enter.

When Photoshop opens, go to File> Open>go to your Google Drive where you have saved your photo in and click on it. The file should open on the screen.  Go to the layers tab on the right side of the screen and click on it if you can not see your image layer.  Your picture should show up with the word background next to it. Double-click on this layer and make a duplicate layer.  Alter the copy as you see fit with filters or image adjustments to create the desired stencil look you want.

Posterize and threshold can be found under image>adjustments> posterize or threshold

You may want to add the poster edges filter on top of your threshold adjustment.  Go to filter>artistic>poster edges.  You may also play with the other filters to see if they create an interesting stencil design.

Essential questions:

What do you feel passionate about?

What issue do you want to bring light to?

What do you want to tell the world about your issue and how will you communicate it in a way we understand?

How will you use symbolism to make your communication obvious to the viewer?

Vocabulary:

Texture - Texture is the quality of a surface, either how it looks and feels or the illusion of how it looks and feels.                                                  

Negative space/Positive space - Positive space is the main subject or focal point of an artwork, while negative space is the area that surrounds it. For example, the figure in a portrait is positive space, and the background is negative space.    

Color scheme - A color scheme is a combination of colors used together in a design to create a specific mood or aesthetic appeal.  

Resources:

Great tutorial for simplifying portraits in the Shepard Fairey style.  This will help you to create multilevel stencils.

http://www.obeygiant.com/

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/the-story-behind-banksy-4310304/?no-ist