Project 1: Footprint Introduction

For our first project of the semester, we had to trace our foot/feet, cut it out from construction paper, and complete an art project that would be used to introduce ourselves to the class.

For my project, I decided to trace both my feet connected so I'd have more spaces to work with. I went with a space theme because I'm interested in space/astrology. To fulfill the different medium requirements, I utilized acrylic paint for the starry background, paint chips for the planets, calligraphy pen for the lettering of my name, and book pages for the rockets. The acrylic paint/paint chips are supposed to represent my love for painting as a medium. The paint chips are also yellow and violet, my favorite colors at the moment. I tried to write my name in a more decorative font because I'm really interested in typography and calligraphy. The rockets represent my love for reading. All in all, I wanted the whole thing to look unified, so I picked interests that could be used in conjunction with my theme.

An extension activity that could be used with this lesson could be to use the footprint as more of a storytelling method; have your students write/tell a short story when they present their project to make the footprint(s) follow a larger theme, rather than just being a random collection of interests. This way, it could be used to teach unity in principles of design; you can use anything in your project, but your project would look more like a collective piece. For example, following a space theme, I could change my project so that there was a person flying a rocket ship across the feet, passing by different planets on the way that represented my interests. Some could be made out of paint chips, book pages, etc. This could possibly encourage students to include more than a few things about their life, depending on what theme they choose to represent. This also works in conjunction with English, as it includes writing and storytelling in the project.