Current charcoal drawing
Assessment Art-Education, evaluated by Pieter Van den Broeck
During our Art-Education class with teacher Pieter Van den Broeck, we were asked to create a life-sized duplicate of a classic painting of our choice. In that painting, we had to incorporate a current topic and draw the characters in a way that made it look as if we were part of the artwork.
We chose The Lamentation over the Dead Christ by Sandro Botticelli. In it, we included the silhouettes of Jana, Indra, Abel, and myself. We’re holding a war victim, referencing one of the many news articles that are published daily about the different wars going on in our world.
A Step-by-Step Process:
Warm-Up:
When we enter the classroom, we see that all the desks are pushed aside, on one of these desks is laying a pile of art-books. Pieter invites us to take a look. He asks what we see and what stands out to us. We have a class discussion about the most renowned artists shown in these photo books.
Creative Phase:
Pieter introduces the assignment of the day: to create a life-sized drawing of ourselves based on a famous painting of our choice. The challenge was to also incorporate a current news topic into our artwork. He gets us started by showing how we can easily draw ourselves realistically on the paper by lying down on the paper, starting with drawing around our silhouette.
We split into groups of four and are given large paper, charcoal, and white chalk. But first, we begin with brainstorming. We decide to choose a news topic and find a matching painting in the photo books. After much deliberation and discussion, we choose an all-encompassing topic: war. Not long after, we find the perfect painting to replicate: The Lamentation over the Dead Christ, painted by Botticelli.
Realization Phase:
After completing our large artworks, we had the opportunity to hang our work in the cafeteria at KDG Campus South. We also wrote a short explanation to accompany our pieces, as the titles themselves sparked much interest among the other students.
The end-results were presented in the cafeteria of our South Campus.
