Doodle Blocks
Visual blending helps viewers experience both the holistic image of a Chuck Close painting – a self-portrait, for example – and the details of color and form at the painting’s surface. Thanks to visual blending, anyone equipped with patience can see both the forest and the trees – the whole and the individual details that make up the whole. For this project, students learn to master visual blending as they make doodles, each corresponding to a different value from white to black, to render a subject. Some choose to make abstract doodles while others choose to speak about the subject through their doodled drawings. The trees inform the forest, so to speak.
Advanced students go beyond the grid to assign single doodles to whole swaths of value.