Enlarging

Once again, students needed to learn how to enlarge using a grid. Once again, we worked on enlarging drawings by Keith Haring, covered with a one inch grid; once again, we enlarged to a three inch grid. Students proudly hung their enlarged drawing all over the room, or took them home where their families praised them.

Now, instead of drawing and tiling directly onto the wall, we needed to enlarge our drawing onto paper. I took sheets of easel paper and had students draw 12” squares, four squares per sheet. I then assigned students four adjacent squares from the mural design – outlining the assigned squares for the students, and also outlining them on my master copy, so I wouldn’t re-assign squares later. Every square – all 243 squares – had to be drawn on paper. Working from a grid of 2/3 inch squares to 12” squares, enlarging the entire mural.

Eventually the squares were completed. Students worked in teams and were responsible for different parts of the mural – four students might work on the two graduates, for example. The squares they had just drawn had to be put together and checked that the entire picture was there, that lines crossing from square to square lined up, that body parts didn’t come together in Picasso-esque fashion. We paperclipped, checked, erased and re-drew, re-checked, moved things around, erased, re-drew, on and on.

When this process was finished, when each figure or element of the mural lined up correctly, we then used marker – green or black, no gang colors here – and drew over the pencil lines. Labelled colors. And, most importantly, we labeled the coordinates for each and every square. B3. H26. I5. F17. Whatever. Every single square had to have a coordinate for the rest of the process.