Kehinde Wiley Portraits

Post date: Mar 21, 2014 2:51:49 AM

I've had great success with this project nearly every year I've taught it. It's become I project I look forward to and feel is necessary in some capacity. The core revelations they have here translate to every bit of draftsmanship they have to perform. I'm actually reaping the reward now because some of my painters have been using grids to great effect. They don't even ask, it's just, hey where's the grid and then they draw it and get on with the painting.

I think I have to expand what I actually teach about the grid so that it becomes more of a tool and less of a thing they just happen to use once and never expand upon. In my head I think i can teach them to make and create their own custom grids so that they can grid out anything without needing so much assistance from me but, ultimately, I'm just not sure it's worth the effort.

The kids kind of hate that they have to draw so much leading up to this project and some of them just hate portraits and graphite, and shading, blah blah blah. It get's old fast because they've probably never really stuck with a technique for this long. I also think that most of them disparage way too easily the value of following through on things that start weak. Below I have quite a few examples of excellent work but I posted some pieces to the Picasa album that were not as fully developed, just click on one of the photos to jump to the album. I can't promise that every student I tell to use the grid use it. It's kind of a yes or no thing.

There's just no guarantee, believe me, I've seen students follow the grid, and then erase the results as if they can't believe what the photograph and the lines are telling them. It's strange to watch. Even my best and brightest students, I'll be like, "see... SEEEEE, look at your actual eyes, they are not that huge... WHYYYY, it's like there's ughhh." And its not really as bad as I make it out to be, I can lose small battlles and win the larger war of realization that almost always happens, and it's some equivalency of, "Oh, I guess I can be accurate, detailed, or actually draw..." You can tell I can clearly think like a teenager, HA. I have no idea how that slow-dawning/abruptly-crashing revelation takes place but it comes through in spits and spurts.

Check out the photos below and check out the actual unit here: Portrait Unit v3.0