Keith Haring: "Graffiti Art"

I wrote "graffiti art" in quotation marks because Keith Haring's artwork is considered graffiti art, but in reality, aerosol artists were already wreaking havoc on subway trains and walls in NYC before Haring was ever called a graffiti artist.

But you can still put Haring in that category because the art he created was, in essence, the same thing those young vandals were doing on the walls in the middle of the night. While riding the subway, Haring noticed the billboards that were in the process of being changed were left with a black, matte board. That was when he began creating transitory rhythmic, line drawings on them, in white chalk. Sometimes creating as many as 40 a day!

I thought this would be a fun project to do in markers, to give the students another chance to work with the colorful markers.

• Hand out 9 X 12 drawing paper or poster board.
• Have a discussion about family and friend relationships. Haring devoted much of his time to public works that carried social messages. We decided to work on a family/friends theme.
• Each students lightly sketched their drawing, making sure to use Haring's iconic heart shape.
• Encourage each student to use a variety of colors and to fully color in their design, outlining in black for the colors punch through.

The artwork above was created by my son, who is in the fourth grade.