Do you know you can take words and turn them into works of art? By selecting words from the page of a book, magazine, or other publications, and blocking them out or “subtracting” them, you can use the remaining words to create an original artwork. Our project today will be to create your own “subtraction art poem.” This creative project will help you see poetry and art in a new way!
Materials:
● A book or magazine of your choosing (we are going to be cutting out a page so it needs to be a publication you don’t mind doing that to)
● Black permanent markers, or whiteout to cover words
● Colored marker, colored pencils, or crayons
● A blank pieces of paper
● Pencil
● Scissors
Directions:
1 - Find a page in a book or magazine that you would like to use for your project. Look for words that you like or that inspire you.
2 - Cut out the page you want to use.
3 - Read the words on the page and decide which words you want to keep for your art poem. Which individual words really stand out to you?
4 - Take your pencil and draw a circle, square, rectangle or any other shape around the words you want to keep. This is to help you mark their location.
5 - Use a blank piece of paper to write down the words that you are keeping to see if they form ideas and phrases for your poem. When you read the words together, do they make sense as a poem (hint: your words do not need to rhyme). If you would like to change the words you have selected, you can erase the mark you made on the text page and try new words.
6 - Once you’ve decided which words you will keep for your poem, read them to yourself and think of something they inspire you to draw. Cover the remaining words on you book or magazine page by blocking or “subtracting” them using permanent marker or whiteout.
7 - When you have isolated the words for your poem, think about how the words inspire your art. Make a sketch of your art inspiration on the page that you cut out of your book or magazine. For example, we used a book that talks about color and sunflowers, so we sketched the outline of a sunflower on our page (see example).
● Now you are going to color in your drawing with markers, colored pencils, or crayons. Make sure that you don’t color over the words you chose for your poem.
● Finally, take a step back and read your new subtraction art poem!
Be creative, and, most importantly, have fun!
Alternate: If you don’t want to tear a page from a book, you can print a page from a story or article you like online, or you can make a photocopy of a page from your book.
We love to see your work! You can share your art with the museum on our social media.