CURIOSITY LAB 2
Can you make a match?
In this workshop, you’ll get to concoct a mixture of paint that matches your own skin tone!
Think + Learn:
Group Agreements
In these workshops, we’re getting curious about ourselves and our world. It takes a lot of bravery to share who we are with each other, to talk about our feelings, to admit when we don’t know something or made a mistake. It can even take bravery to ask questions.
Let’s do our best to respect each other’s bravery, identities, and experiences.
Click through the slideshow to read guidelines to help us do that, or click here to watch a video that explains our group agreements.
Think + Learn:
Your brain on colors
Read & scroll through these slides to get our brains moving and thinking about how we see color!
Experiment: Try to make a paint that matches your skin tone
In this activity, you’ll be creating a paint shade that matches your own skin. We are starting small with little bits of paints first. This will help us learn how to do the process before we mix up a big batch.
Before you get started, read these notes:
- Make sure your station is all set up.
- Squeeze small amounts of each color onto your plate. It’s okay if you don’t have green – you can make some with your blue and yellow.
- Have water, paintbrushes, and paper towels ready.
- Follow along with Cozbi as she paints. She will start out showing you how to make a deep brown first, because everyone will have at least a little brown. Then if your skin is a different shade or a lighter shade, she will show you how to take that deep dark brown and lighten it up to make a shade that matches yours.
- It may take you a little while to mix up a shade that matches your skin, and that is okay! It will probably take you longer than the video. Relax and enjoy the process. Throughout the video, Cozbi gives us words of wisdom and encouragement. Feel free to take a look at them all in one place here!
Having trouble getting a match? You don’t need to start over!
- Look at the shade you’ve created. If the color looks “too blue” or “too red” or “too purple” or “too orange…,” etc., try looking at the color wheel. Identify the color that you just named. Now try adding the color OPPOSITE to that color. For example, if the paint looks too orange, try adding blue. If it looks too green, try adding red.
- You can try brushing a bit of the paint onto your skin to help you see where you are & know where to go next.
Questions for reflection:
- What do you notice about your skin that you haven’t noticed before?
- What did you notice while you were creating your own shade?
- Did anything surprise you as you worked to create your own shade?
- What do you wonder about skin now that you’ve taken part in this activity?
Read: All the Colors of the Earth by Sheila Hamanaka
In this book you will see the colors of people’s skin associated with colors you can find in nature.
We read this book while people were still creating their own paint shades.
Activity: Name your shade
Now it’s your turn to name your own shade of skin!
If you’d like, watch this video where some students mix and name their skin shades.
Need more inspiration? Look through the following slides. Then write down your chosen name on the printable or in your booklet.
Alternate activity: If your group is not able to create your own shade for some reason, use a variety of paint chips to explore color and try to find a close match to each person’s skin tone. Even though the paint chips have names already, each person can still come up with their own name for their unique shade.
Activity: Celebrate your skin with a poem
In this activity, you’ll be writing a poem about your skin! This slideshow gives you some ideas of patterned poems you can write. Or you could write a free verse poem, which is an any-way-you-want-to-do-it poem.
Make: Let’s paint!
In this activity, you’ll mix a bigger batch of your skin tone-matching paint to create a field of color, a silhouette, a handprint, or your own design. Be sure to save some of your paint so you can make a family collage.
For a relaxing how-to, watch Cozbi’s video below – or use the written instructions below the video.
Make:
Create your own oríkì
Now we can combine what we learned about ourselves in Workshop 1 with our painting project to create an oríkì. Maybe yours will look something like this:
What’s an oríkì (pronounced or-ee-kee)?
Writer & speaker Luvvie Ajayi Jones introduces oríkìs in her book Professional Troublemaker. Read the summary below, but be sure to learn more about them on her blog.
First, try making an oríkì as a group. Find a person that you all know (could be someone you know personally like your granddad, aunt, or cousin — or someone like Black Panther, Wonder Woman, Beyonce, your teacher, world leader or changemaker). Generate a list of things that make them awesome, special, and one-of-a-kind. Combine your ideas and work together to structure the oríkì. If you’re stuck you can get ideas from the guide below.
Now that you’ve had some practice as a group, come up with your own oríkì! Feel free to use the guide below to help you.
Once you’re done, arrange the painting you made with your oríkì to create a masterpiece that celebrates the amazing you.
