Building Tangrams, Drawing Faces, Monochrome Underpainting

Earlier this year I published a post entitled, Math and Science in Art. The Magnetic building tiles that I referenced are traditionally used as blocks for making three-dimensional buildings or towers. We also used them as an activity in an adult daycare memory unit where I volunteer in teaching art. We purchased two one-hundred-piece sets. I passed out about a dozen pieces of various shapes and sizes for my clients to work with and it was a big hit. The translucent colored tiles were visually stimulating and the magnetic interlocking shapes provided kinesthetic learning in a fun physical activity.

Engaging in such tactile learning reminded us all of an activity we did when we were younger, working to stimulate the brain much like singing songs we learned many years ago.

Ark/Ship

We also used a whiteboard to quickly draw familiar items using dry-erase markers in a game much like Pictionary. Since we were already using these tiles and the whiteboard was magnetic, I decided to make two-dimensional tangrams of familiar objects and animals for my students to guess.

Visual art is about making connections between what we see and feel and combining areas of color juxtaposed to create lines and form compositions. Using geometric shapes in distinctly different colors to construct tangrams is like using Picasso's and Braque's Cubism to paint something abstractly.

Here are some more ideas for making tangrams out of geometric shapes:

Castle

Camel

  

Bird

Jack-in-the-Box

Train

Fish

                                       

I recently watched an episode of "The Joy of Painting" in which Bob Ross invited his old painting instructor to demonstrate how to paint a portrait. "Contemplative Lady" (S16E6) shows the artist, John Thamm (of Spokane, WA) building up the structure of a face on a shellacked board using a limited palette of sepia tones like you would have seen in an old photograph. The wet surface allowed him to move around the color and he used a rag to remove color to expose lighter tones that became highlights.

Using a Grisaille, from Leanne Rath Art

Many painters sketch on their canvas first and then create a monochrome underpainting (a grisaille) to define the range of values. Later, they would begin to add color according to the value map they had laid out. In essence, the tangrams are roughing in a shape that your brain can recognize as a familiar 2D shape, much like the underpainting of values allows your brain to interpret the 3D image of a face.

In one of my 3rd-grade classes, we learned to draw gorillas by building up their faces and bodies using sketched shapes and lines. Rather than going directly to drawing the animal, we broke them down into elemental shapes, then outlined them later, once we got the proportions right.

Drawing the body using such methods is similar though less precise than laying out a face.

Whether you start early using tangrams or discover them later in life, they are fun to use as guessing games or challenging puzzles.


And don't be afraid of drawing. While there are plenty of methodology lessons for drawing, the best teacher is practice. So get yourself a sketchbook!


If you enjoyed this topic, please comment. Maybe it will inspire you to try the magnetic blocks as a family activity during this time of self-isolation.