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Communicate without words

Creative project Factory

Key data

Technique: Drawing
I can do alone: Yes
Required time: < 20 minutes
City: Home

Description

Crazy things can happen in Keith’s paintings: for example, dolphins, crawling babies, televisions, barking dogs, snakes, and ticking clocks appear. The figures reappear so often in his works that they are almost like an alphabet in their own right: Keith’s very own script with images.
Develop your own alphabet of characters, colors and shapes.

Instructions for making it yourself

You will need

  • paper
  • pens

Alternatively:

  • chalk
  • black cardboard

Step 1

What moves you? What is worth fighting for? What message do you want to share with the

world?

 

Develop your own visual language. Think about simple motifs, symbols and signs.

Ponder this

Breakdance, comics, hieroglyphs, grievances, injustice… do you share Keith Haring’s sources of inspiration?

STEP 2

Make several drawings that are composed of your motifs.

 

Tip!

Draw with chalk on cardboard and try to remove the chalk as little as possible from the surface.

Ponder this

Compare your language with that of Keith Haring. What was his intention?

Work in pairs

Exchange ideas with friends or classmates. Immerse yourself in their visual language!

"The reality of art begins in the eyes of the beholder and gains power through imagination, invention, and confrontation."

Keith Haring

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Reflect

Do you agree with Keith Haring?

Delve deeper

Artwork Factory

Artwork Keith Haring, Untitled (Subway Drawing), 1983

For his “Subway Drawings,” Keith Haring used empty advertising spaces, on whose dark background he drew the outlines of his main motifs in one go with white chalk. On the right side of the image are the outlines of two human figures in comic pose and a frieze of crawling babies. Next to the drawing is the poster that was originally pasted beside it: a promotional poster for a 3-D movie entitled “The Man Who Wasn’t There.”

Delve deeper

Artist Factory

Artist Keith Haring

was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, USA, in 1958 and died in New York in 1990.