Keith Haring Symbolism Artwork

7th Grade students are nearing completion this week with their Keith Haring Symbolism group paintings. For this project, we started off by learning about the life and artwork of Keith Haring and his use of pictographs as a visual language within his artwork. His art was heavily loaded with symbols and imagery that told a story. We even compared some of his the vases he created to ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphic sculptures and most students had trouble telling the two apart!

Egyptian Hieroglyphics                                                         Keith Haring Pictographs

                                      

For our first step, we discussed what symbols are and how we use them to represent things sometimes literally and sometimes for ideas and concepts. For example, a heart shape we may say is a literal symbol of a heart - but conceptually it represents the idea of love.Students were then challenged to create their own unique symbols which represented ideas and concepts that they would use in their artwork. We also warmed up each day by reversing the process with students challenged to create visual symbols for 4 different ideas I presented to them.

After we spent time creating symbols, students were put into groups of three and challenged to create a large size mural design incorporating symbols based around a theme the group agreed on. Here are some pictures of what they are working on in class so far! 

Students discussing their theme, ideas, symbols and beginning to draw out their plan

Next, we outlined with marker to to separate and finalize each symbol. After that we were ready to paint!