At last Tuesday’s art class with the ‘Hidden’ Project we continued with our theme of self-reflection and expression by creating alternative self-portraits.

Louie took photos of each of the young people with their arms and legs outstretch, so that these could be manipulated using Adobe programmes to turn them into moving puppets. He taught each person how to import their image and layer it over a background image they had designed. They then ‘pinned’ the parts of the body (arms, legs, head) that they wanted to move and dragged each of the pins about, frame by frame, to form a digital stop-motion animation. The characters looked like they were doing some 60s dance moves, especially when overlaid on the brightly patterned backgrounds they had drawn.

We’ll have the animations uploaded soon…

From miniature self-portraits, to life-size! The young people also drew around themselves on long sheets of paper, using their favourite colour to make their mark. Symbols, patterns, colours and star-signs were added to express identity and interests.

Again, much like turning the lights out to create our projection art, being able to get down  on the floor and make work changes the atmosphere of the art flat and helps to break down barriers in terms of the structure and formality of art.

It is widely understood that making art when in a group-setting allows people to ‘open up’ and for conversation to flow. Throughout all of the activities we are working on in the art flat with the Hidden project, we are learning more about ourselves and each other, working towards building self-esteem and respect for others.

Remember, this session is only open to young people involved with the Hidden project. If you are a child or young teen, or would like to bring your kids to our Broomhill Kids Art Class, they run on Wednesdays from 3.30pm-5.30pm and are FREE. Scroll through the blog for posts and pictures of the activities we do in these sessions.