Bodies in Motion Inspired by Keith Haring

Keith Haring was a graffiti and pop artist who became widely known for his work in New York City in the 1980's.  He started creating his outline style of artwork on blank advertisement spaces in the NYC subway.    Here are some examples of Haring's work:

Third and fourth grade artists created life-sized figures in the style of Keith Haring.  We are also studying drawing the body in motion in Haring's simplified style.  

Visit www.haringkids.com to learn more about Keith Haring, see more of his work and play games inspired by his artistic style. 

Student Guest Post! Street Art by Morgan Frank

Street Art 

by Morgan Frank

Many of you may have seen some of the art I have done, graffiti. Some people would argue that graffiti is not an art! I think it’s a way of expressing yourself and it takes talent, so in my opinion it’s an art. I like to do graffiti on canvas, and sometimes on walls, and boards (I’ll talk about that later).  I recently found a new style, it’s not necessarily graffiti, its called space art.

Graffiti

I started graffiti two years ago. I was basically just doing bubble letters and combining them. Then I moved on to more block letters. After that I got some graffiti books and it turns out that arrows are a big part of graffiti and they look very cool. Then I saw some graffiti that I couldn't read. I thought this was very cool. At first I just started out not having the graffiti readable, but then I decided to put words into the unreadable graffiti, just like the bubble and block letter graffiti. This is called wildstyle. I was ten and was figuring out what wildstyle looked like. Now I have adapted to wildstyle and I don't need to do even use pencil. The style of wildstyle I was doing was straight, like all the arrows and letters were straight, then I moved on to having them more curved. Now at age twelve, I started using spray paint as my background, but the problem was that sharpie colors couldn't make their color on the colored spray paint. So, I got these markers called MOLOTOW markers. I would not suggest these markers to beginners, as they can be very hard to use and they are expensive. The reason I got them was because they’re paint markers and I needed colors that could go over spray paint. But, I found that these markers can go over each other, so the blue, red, etc. can go over the black, so it’s a little tricky to fill inside the lines. Now, I do straight graffiti again but it is much better!

I can also do throw up graffiti, which is like bubble letters but it has different little bubbles inside of it. I can do semi wildstyle which is readable graffiti words, but it’s very complicated. I would consider myself pretty good at graffiti for being twelve.

Space Painting

I started space painting very recently. I have done maybe five or six canvases. I have not completely mastered it, but I'm still improving.  Okay, well here’s how you do space painting. First you spray paint the background you want your buildings to be, then on top of that you spray paint what color you want your planets to be. Then you put a spray paint cap or some round object over where you want your planets to be, then spray paint black around the planets and the objects that are covering the planets. Then with a spackle you cut out buildings horizontally and then the buildings are the color you put under the black. Then you add some last details, take off the material that is covering your planets and you're done, and they you just need to wait for it to dry. This is a lot harder than it looks!

Tagging

Tagging is your mark. It’s like your signature. It’s in a certain type of style, you don't always do your name, you can do something that inspires you like my tag is wizzard 101. The reason I came up with this tag is because the letters look really slick when you put them together, and I put two z’s in it to give it some extra spice.              

Those are some types of street art or urban art whatever you want to call it. My name is Morgan Frank (tag) wizzard 101. I Hope I gave you some interest or inspiration!

Graffiti

Check out this graffiti banner made by a fourth grader. He is so excited about exploring this type of art.