We’re all used to seeing satirical cartoons of prominent people. Mockery of other people is everywhere, especially in the media. But have you ever dared to caricature yourself?
Yesterday our Family Fun participants did just that, by taking inspiration from the caricatures in our current “Print Shop Window” exhibition and flexing their satirical muscles on themselves. The result was some very funny faces and an afternoon of fun all round!
After exploring the drawings in the exhibition and learning about how facial features can be caricatured by exaggeration, our Family Fun artists turned their skills on themselves and made sculptures of their own faces using recycled materials. The children thought about their own faces and identified the bits that make them look particularly them. Then they made them even more so. Got big ears? Make them even bigger! Got a long nose? Make it ginormous! Got blonde hair? Make it really bright!
You might think it would feel a bit funny to pinpoint your funny features and make fun of yourself. After all, it’s not very pleasant when other people to do it to you. But do you know, Lynsey and I discovered the strangest thing. When we were making our samples prior to the event, it felt positively liberating to identify our ‘flaws’ and exaggerate them. As if we were taking control of the noticeable and irregular bits of our faces and saying “this is who I am, and it’s me who’s saying it!”
I don’t know if our participants had the same experience as us, but there was certainly a lot of hilarity and good humour about the afternoon!
Our next Family Fun will be on Saturday 30th November, from 1-4pm. We’ll be celebrating Book Week Scotland by making paper bag puppets of well-known characters from books, using some of the exquisite illustrations in the rare books collection as inspiration. Plus come dressed as your own favourite book character (we’ll be dressing up too, so there’s no excuse for you not to come in costume!). Find us in the events space behind the gallery. Drop-in session, free.
Posted by: Sarah
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