Description

Offering students the possibilities to express their thoughts and concerns, this project outlines a structure to help students make public posters with important messages in a bold and straightforward manner, similar to some of the work Haring did during his lifetime

Objective

To learn about Keith Haring, a contemporary artist.

To learn that art can make social statements and be created in public places.

To have the students choose a word or phrase with a positive theme and create an image that depicts the theme in the "Keith Haring style": bold and simple designs with flat, bright, and meaningful colors.
<br> To learn about composition, color theory, line, design, and symbolic images.

Resources

Keith Haring Posters

Posters, a lesson

Posters for a Charity, a lesson

Materials

Poster board
paint & painting supplies
markers

Procedure

CURRICULUM
Color Theory, composition, design, Art History

DESCRIPTION
Students were introduced to Keith Haring by using the website: www.haringkids.com. This website is composed of a biography of Haring's life and art, posters that he created, snapshots from around the world, activities, games, an interactive coloring book, flipbooks, morphs, kids art, and books. I concentrated on his biography, posters, flipbooks, and morphs. The website was very valuable because it brought Haring's work alive with animation. The purpose of my project was to have the students create a poster that artistically told a message. Keith Haring used bold colors, simple shapes, and repeated symbols to convey his message. My students were asked to pick a positive word or phrase and create an image that represented this word or phrase. They were to be inspired by Haring, but of course, were told that they were the artists. Some of the words that were chosen were family, love, friendship, endurance, skill, justice, unity, fun, excitement, and celebration.

PROCEDURE
The students first sketched their idea out on paper and then transferred it on to poster board. They needed to have a ruler width border in which their word or phrase appeared. Color, whether paint or marker was used, was applied flat and evens. The students were really excited about this project and did an outstanding job.

Extensions

This lesson is part of a two-part project. Refer to Banners with a Message to see the second part.