Positive Negative Torn Paper Plants

For this project, I asked the students to go out and photograph trees and plants. I stressed the importance of framing the leaves against a blank background (like the sky or a blank wall) so that they could really tell the difference between the positive and negative space. We then tweaked them in Picasa and printed them out as high contrast black and white photos.

Working from the photo of their choice, the students drew the outline of their plants/leaves. They then had to tear black paper into tiny pieces and glue it down to fill in the positive space that makes up their plant. Next, they printed out a few pieces of patterned paper that they then tore to fill in the negative space/background.

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Sharpie Silhouettes

Once they were pretty comfortable with value, my high schoolers moved into working with positive and negative space. The assignemnet was to use a silhouette of themselves, but I find that my students (and most teenagers!) are really averse to drawing themselves. So, I compromised and let some of them choose a silhouette of an animal or other object as the basis for their piece. They had to first draw the silhouette and then they could either fill the inside of it or they could fill all of the negative space around it with doodles, words, and other imagery that related to them.

A lot of the pieces became self portraits in a way (even if it wasn't their silhouette) because most students ended up filling in the space in a sort of 'stream of consciousness' style. These definitely took a little longer than expected but the resluts were definitely worth it!

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