Up Close with Chuck Close

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Chuck Close is my favorite artist ever, ever, ever.  I just think he’s so incredibly inspirational and talented and nice.  I was so bummed to learn he was one of the guest speakers at this year's NAEA conference, because I couldn't go.

In case you aren't familiar with his life, he had a real rough deal.  His father died when he was only 11.  He suffered from learning disabilities in school and was consistently discouraged-told that he shouldn’t pursue college.  He suffers from Prosopagnosia, or facial blindness. He developed his painting skills and became an insanely talented artist, but then had a spinal artery collapse leaving him a quadriplegic. 

This man’s had his fair share of bad luck, and yet, he remains this radiant ball of realistic positivity.  I wish I could just bottle up whatever is inside him and drink it when I’m feeling low.

He is the epitome of taking a really shitty situation (or in his case, several) and making something good out of it.

In class, I use Chuck Close as the inspiration for our collaborative portrait projects.  It’s a project I do with my Art Studio kids, which covers shape, value, composition, proportion and portrait.  What I do is I find an image of someone famous (this is fun, because I don’t tell the kids who I chose- they have to guess).  In Photoshop change the image into black and white and make edits where necessary before chopping it up into 25 pieces.  Each piece is numbered and given to a student.  I’m careful not to give the numbers in order, that way number 1 can’t see what number 2 is doing.  The kids have to focus and do the absolute best rendition of their piece as possible, because in the end, we put them all together to form one, large image.

This was actually a lesson from an intro to drawing college course offered where I studied.  I never took the class, but every semester there was a new drawing up.  Initially I thought, This will be too hard for high school kids, it's a college assignment... but I gave it a try anyway and I was way wrong.  This could work on every level- it all depends on the image you choose and how you break it up, really.  It could work in color, it could work as a landscape- it works every which way!

Here are some successful examples from previous years- each year had a theme:

Year 1 was Famous Artists

Picasso was the first.

Georgia was also done that year.  Her hands were finished at some point- those two girls were out sick that week.  I don't know why I didn't snap a 'finished' shot, but it was pretty good.

The first part of Year 2 was Famous Guitarists

Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine

 Jimi Hendrix.  This one makes people laugh cause of his itty bitty face, but I love the way the guitar head and hands turned out.

Carlos Santana.  Again, someone was absent and their piece was missing, but his face came out fantastic!  I also loved his hat and guitar strap.  This was a great one with all the textures.

 The second part of Year 2 was Jazz Musicians

Good ol' Louis Armstrong.  His eyes are a little goofy, but I love the texture on the trumpet!

Billie Holiday might be my favorite one.  Her hair came out awesome- the microphone, and the texture of the curtain.  This was a really great class- each kid drew really well and you can tell.

This last one was also done Year 2, but I decided to change the theme up a bit:

Gotta have some Gaga.

This year, our beloved principal is retiring.  My work BFF and I are both teaching a section of Art Studio and have decided to do two portraits of him- one “then”- when he started in the 1970’s, and one “now”.  It’s going to be awesome!  We're going to hang them across the hall from one another and dedicate them to him at our spring arts festival staring the week of May 14th.

I know these works aren't totally reminiscent of Close's technique, but it's a great way to introduce his work to the kids, and to get the motivated to work both on a larger scale, and with each other.

If you're interested, I've embedded the power point I use in class to introduce this project.  I use mostly pictures and videos- I don't use to much text, that way the kids are listening to me, not just reading off the projection.  Also, I can't embed youtube videos into my PPT program, which is extremely frustrating.  So what I do is put the link on a slide and open it separately.  I've watched a ton of how-to youtube videos on this and it never works.  If anyone has the solution, please let me know!

*Also, I realize the second slide on this ppt has a crazy font.  Something changed when I uploaded it.  I'll fix that when it's not 6:15am.*

Chuck close ppt