Lois Mailou Jones-style Drawing

This Lois Mailou Jones-inspired drawing is in honor of Black History month (coming up in Feb). During Lois’ remarkable life, she painted, designed masks, textiles and stained glass windows, traveled the world and never stopped learning. Her “Les Fetiches” art has a style that is fun to imitate.1. Starting with a black sheet of paper (I prefer art paper, not construction paper as it often is just dark gray) the students draw a large oval face that fills the paper. Small lemon-shape eyes are drawn in the middle of the face, along with one for the mouth.
2. The students place a dot that is centered between the eyes, and then draw large lemon shapes that go around the eyes, and touch the outside edge of the face. (The goal is to make lots of closed shapes.) The same shape is drawn around the mouth.
3. Students draw a simple nose that touches the center of the eyes and top of the mouth. Two eyebrow-like curves are added to the forehead.
4. All of the closed shapes on the face are completely colored in with colored pencil.
5. A white colored pencil is used to go over selected corners to brighten (or tint) them, and a black colored pencil is used to go over selected corners to darken (or shade) them. For the most dramatic results, all the corners should be either tinted or shaded.
CA Art Standard: 2.2 Mix and apply tempera paints to create tints, shades, and neutral colors.