Saturday Studio: Playing Around

Alyssa Dumire, Director of Education

Visitors to the museum this week may have noticed a change in the Learning Center: new art! Just like the rest of the galleries, the art on view in our interactive space changes every few months. Right now, we’re focusing on the world’s favorite color: blue. How is blue used in David Blow’s The Promise, below?

A swath of vibrant sky stretches across the middle of the composition with a border to match. It’s the perfect shade of sky blue, fitting for the magical scene both above and below. A unicorn gallops across a field of daisies and roses while a rainbow stretches across a background of fluffy clouds. The scene repeats above, not mirrored but rotated, so we might wonder, which way is up? Like a playing card, either way you flip it part of the scene is always right-side-up. Compositionally, this creates interesting negative space (the blue sky) across the center of the image, an unusual strategy. 

Therman Statom’s Queen of Hearts (not currently on view) shows the artist’s twist on a more traditional playing card. The queen is rendered in painterly strokes and soft colors, rather than the usual more geometric patterns. The subject here is right-side-up at the top of the work, rather than at the bottom, and the negative space is pushed out to the corners while the middle is a little confusing. In both works, the artist clearly decided which way to hang the work based on their signatures!

Try it! Create an artwork that you can display multiple ways, inspired by The Promise or Queen of Hearts.

If you want to be sure that your image is exactly the same either way you flip it, here’s how:

1. Draw a sketch of your design with pencil, not worrying too much about the placement on your paper (we’ll be transferring it to another!).
2. Color the back of this paper with graphite pencil or stick, making sure to cover any places where you’ve drawn on the front.

3. On your final (nice) piece of paper, draw a border using a ruler or another straight edge.
4. Place your drawing as desired within the bottom half of your frame (if you want to create negative space in the middle) or the top half (if you want your negative space at the edges). Hold your paper up to the light so you can mark the corners of your border. Draw over the lines.

5. Rotate your paper 180 degrees and repeat, lining up the corner marks. You may need to erase or adjust some of the lines in the middle. Repeat the process if you want to add additional designs.

6. Now, add color and design a border to match your image.

What happened where your images meet in the middle? Notice the new shapes created by rotating and repeating the picture!