There’s something magical and mysterious about shadows. They can be scary leaving us to wonder what could it be and they can be playful, telling us a story without color or sound.
The artist Kumi Yamashita uses shadows to create her art. She describes taking something material and creating something inmaterial. Can you see her faces?
Using shadows to create creatures for storytelling has been around for many years. Can you see what kind of creatures these artists made their hand shadows look like?
There are lots of different ways to play with shadows. On a sunny day, you can find lots of shadows and create your own to play with. You could try following a shadow, walking or biking. Where does it take you?
On a cloudy or dark day, you can move your play indoors using a flashlight or lamp without a shade to create shadows.
Outdoors it is fun to search for shadows. Trees make especially beautiful shadows. Find materials nearby on the ground such as pinecones, small sticks or stones and “trace” the shadows using those material as your mark! Better yet, find materials in your home and use those to trace! What can you think of to use?
It might be fun to find things inside your home to create making shadows with. Find a great, big piece of white paper or even a sheet and a flat place in the sun to lay everything out on. Move your pieces around and see how the shadows change.
Some ideas of materials to use to make shadows with could be blocks, large cars or trucks, pretend animals, cardboard that you make shapes out of, clay with pieces stuck into it such as sticks. It’s fun to try all kinds of things and see their shadow shapes!
You can even create shadows indoors using a lamp without a shade and some objects from your house. If you have a nice white wall, move a low table over and see if you can make shadows with your objects on the wall using a flashlight. How do the shadows change if you move the flashlight closer or farther away?
You can use paint, pencils or markers to trace your shadows.
What happens if you use chalk to trace your shadows outdoors and you went away for awhile? Are your shadows the same when you return later on? What changed? How?
If you traced your shadows indoors, take away your object. How does it look now? Can you build a picture or a story around that shadow shape?
