People come in many shapes, sizes and shades. This is a fact. A beautiful fact. A fact to be celebrated.
However even today, people are still separated according to their shape, size and shade. They are separated into good and bad, accepted or rejected, us and them. They are also separated according to their skin tone.
Art is meant to express, educate and communicate with people. On this skin tones project, art is here to show how people are united, rather than divided.
In Pinewood school, we created an art project to raise awareness on everything that unites us, people of all shades. We built a painting project in which the exact same colours have been used to create a wide variety of skin tones. By mixing the 3 primary colours, red, yellow and blue, plus some white and black, students created all skin tones. From a chocolate brown, to a lollipop pink, from a light mocha to a freckled orange.
As skin comes in layers, we also created an art project using skin tone colouring pencils. Students were able to find and match the colouring pencils to the skin tone of a reference image and created layers to show dimension. They matched and mixed them, much like the way the layers of our skin work.
We want our young people, those who will shape our world in a few years, to build bridges, where barriers previously existed, common ground, where division thrived and to promote common sense.
People, are the same. People, can look different. People, are equal.