Subject | Drawing

To commemorate the 20th anniversary of Keith Haring’s death, the Art department of Lauro Ikastola School in the Basque Country in Spain, recently organized a graffiti competition to promote reading. Students worked on the winning idea for three days

The project was split into several lessons. At the beginning the pupils got some information about Keith Haring We created some colorful Keith Haring paintings on the break court in front of our school. There are now two big paintings, where the children can do hop-games. The other paintings show typical school subjects like art.

A fun project where kids paint Haring figures on aluminum foil.

Our 2nd graders did a fabulous job as they created these amazing pictures in the style of Keith Haring. We learned how to draw basic body shapes in proportion by drawing ovals. We drew an oval for the head, a bigger oval for the body, 3 smaller ovals for each arm, and then 3 ovals for each leg. We learned that our body only bends where we have a joint... in this case where two of our ovals met. We drew people doing all kinds of fun things. Ideally, the children drew figures doing something that was important to them... something they loved. Then we cut out our figures and glued them down. We tried to overlap the figures to show depth. This was a hard concept for the children to understand, but it was really interesting to see the results. Finally, we created some visual texture by making a beautiful patterned floor for our figures to dance on. I love the energy in all of these pictures. In the 2nd picture especially, you can actually see the children playing basketball. The overlapping in this piece of artwork provides so much depth to the picture.

Students at PS183 in New York, learn how to draw with wire, as part of the bodies in motion workshop

Using traditional portraiture methods of proportion, students explore and combine their knowledge with Haring-style, expressive, and colorful aesthetics to produce vibrant clay masks.

To download facial proportions sheet go to Visual Aids, use link on the right.

Elementary school students from Arkansas create a collaborative, large-scale project inspired by Keith Haring's subway art.

Sent in by a school in Germany, this class created the perfect Haring-style table settings.

Children from the Netherlands explore a unit on Keith Haring, including Tee-shirt stamping and collaborative, mural-sized drawings.