THE ARTIST’S

BRIEFCASE
By Hervé Tullet
and Alessandra Falconi

Activity book
FOREWORD
MAKING CHILDREN’S IMAGINATION VISIBLE

This activity book tries to accompany the teacher in the exploration of play with
the first graphic and artistic elements and tools drawn from the practice and
poetics of Hervé Tullet.
Points and lines, primary colours and their infinite combinations open up small
worlds to be explored with children from preschool and primary school. Your
creativity will then be your best ally in devising activities using these starting
points.
The teacher needs, first of all, to take care of his or her own way of planning:
playing with Hervé Tullet before proposing an activity to the students is
fundamental. Feeling what the freedom to experiment entails with tools often
taken for granted (felt-tip pens, fingers, hands, brushes ...), with apparently
trivial gestures (tearing, overlapping, juxtaposing ...), will make it easier to
cultivate the pleasure of graphic-visual play in the classroom.
Among the many merits that Hervé Tullet has is that of having put simplicity
back at the centre. Often, in fact, we are afraid that "it is not enough" and so our
didactic planning adds things, rather than deepening them and leaving them a
slower pace.
With Tullet, on the other hand, we could never stop "scribbling", because at a
certain point there will be many variations to explore again and again.
The material you find in the briefcase, printed on transparent acetate, allows
continuous games and variations, leaving you the possibility to add everything
you will produce on paper and cardboard. You can use transparent material to
rework it with oil colours, tempera, coloured acetates (old notebook covers), but
also to print previously scanned children’s graphic proposals.
Even if, as authors, we usually have to give some indications to clarify the many
aspects of planning and application, we would like in this case to leave many
possible uses open. If we take teenagers who have to design a campaign of
posters, we immediately realize how much these playful signs can help develop
new graphic ideas with them.
If we consider the delicate topic (but are there any topics not to be taken
with delicacy?) of making art with students with difficulties, we can leave the
material in this briefcase the opportunity to take the initiative, to make the
first "playful gesture" to start the work. We can overlap and compose, in a small,
tiny or huge space, and let the shapes and colours suggest things. "Look what’s
inside this briefcase: what can we do with it?". Observing and manipulating will
allow our children to enter into dialogue with Tullet’s proposals.
In this notebook we go through them together so as not to feel alone in the
planning, but our invitation is then to explore new and better ideas.

©2020, H. Tullet e A. Falconi, La valigetta dell’artista, Trento, Erickson 3

PART
ONE

THE
materialS
©2020, H. Tullet e A. Falconi, La valigetta dell’artista, Trento, Erickson 5
6 ©2020, H. Tullet e A. Falconi, La valigetta dell’artista, Trento, Erickson
"This must be emphasized: that the most exact scientific
knowledge of nature, of plants, animals, the earth and its
history, or of the stars, is of no use to us unless we have
acquired the necessary equipment for representing it; that
the most penetrating understanding of the way these things
work together in the universe is useless to us unless we are
equipped with the appropriate forms; that the profoundest
mind, the most beautiful soul, are of no use to us unless we
have the corresponding forms to hand."
Spiller J. (ed.) (1956), Paul Klee, Das bildnerische Denken, Basel /
Stuttgart, Schwabe.

"Every child is carried away by

the energy of the group, they
outdo themselves by creating
new things.
The idea is to open a space
of freedom, to let oneself
be led by a sort of collective
"improvisation" that authorizes
the incident and the overflow.
It is a unique moment while
an engaging work is created
together."

Hervé Tullet (2015), Peinturlures,

Les ateliers d’Hervé Tullet, London,
Phaidon.

©2020, H. Tullet e A. Falconi, La valigetta dell’artista, Trento, Erickson 7

ACTIVITY 1
CLASSIFYING SHAPES AND SIGNS
The first proposal is to classify the material by deciding with the children some
observation and subdivision criteria:

BY COLOUR BY SHAPE

BY QUANTITY BY STRANGENESS

Establishing observation criteria allows us to look more carefully and to dialogue

better with the artist’s visual vocabulary to make it become an alphabet with
which to express ourselves.
8 ©2020, H. Tullet e A. Falconi, La valigetta dell’artista, Trento, Erickson
ACTIVITY 2
DRAWING TOGETHER
Let’s select some Tullet’s graphics together (a few at a time, in order to work more
in depth) and propose them to the pupils. We can ask the children to continue the
sign or the drawing. We can organize the activity individually (each child has a
piece of the briefcase available on a sheet of paper) or a collective game in which
several children "continue" the signs and / or shapes together.
Accompanying the child by letting him or her take possession of visual
information (and the gestures necessary for their creation) is fundamental to
everyone’s expressive autonomy. The immersion in Tullet’s work allows to multiply
the expressive possibilities that lines, points, primary colours can provide and
suggest.

©2020, H. Tullet e A. Falconi, La valigetta dell’artista, Trento, Erickson 9

ACTIVITY 6
GRAPHIC DICTATION
Once the visual compositions have been created it is essential that the child
can talk about them. Certainly the teacher will be able to approach and ask
questions about the procedure that the child used, about his or her choices and
preferences ... but in this case we propose the "graphic dictation" as a possibility
to start using language in a precise way when referring to an image.
The graphic dictation, in fact, expects that a child, or a couple or a small group
(depending on how the activity was organized previously) give oral instructions
to their classmates, so that they can draw.
In an interesting dialogue between what is said and how it is received, the child
deals with the precision or ambiguity of his or her way of describing: in order for
his or her classmates to make the drawing, precise words are needed to guide
them. You need to line the actions necessary to repeat the process.
In the end, we share the joy of discovering what the classmates understood and
drew, what they interpreted and how.

©2020, H. Tullet e A. Falconi, La valigetta dell’artista, Trento, Erickson 15

ACTIVITY 7
CREATING TEXTURES
A very interesting graphic activity for developing visual communication is
creating textures. We can develop a path in which to:

. Discover the textures of the environment in which we live (it can be an

orange as well as the manhole in the school garden). We can make a first
catalogue with the frottage technique (an activity already proposed by
Bruno Munari as part of his very famous workshops), in which to "collect"
the textures that we have under our eyes every day.

. Create a visual catalogue using the textures proposed by Tullet and the
combination technique: by overlapping different signs we will always have
new textures. Also in this case, not dispersing the visual discoveries of
children is essential. We can prepare square sheets of 10 cm per side in
which to keep graphic memory of the discovered textures. Each child or
group of children can produce textures in quantity, and together with the
teacher the reorganization of the material takes place ("Let’s look at them
all together, what they look like, how many we have discovered ..."). We will be
able to organize all our discoveries in a collective book or in a poster. Then
we could also give to these textures a name. This will allow us to recall them
in a precise way if we will have to reproduce them in the future. With double”
textures (and not just those) we can create a memory with the children.

+ =

16 ©2020, H. Tullet e A. Falconi, La valigetta dell’artista, Trento, Erickson

ACTIVITY 8
CREATING RHYTHMS
The beautiful colourful shapes can be the starting point of a first experience on
rhythm. Also, in this case it is fundamental to experience rhythm with the body
first: we can use our hands, the objects, and begin to create small sound games.
We can then bind together different graphical shapes to different sounds (also
invented by the children).
We are ready for a first visual score: we arrange the shapes and then we try to play
them; as we modify the visual score also the sound effect will change.
We can continue for a long time: binding together sounds and graphic signs allows
the child to become, slowly, more and more aware of his or her playing at planning,
of how visual and sonorous ideas can be born and modify themselves.

©2020, H. Tullet e A. Falconi, La valigetta dell’artista, Trento, Erickson 17

PART
TWO

THE ALPHABET
OF DRAWING
Rhoda Kellogg (1898-1987), psychologist and director of a nursery school in San Francisco,
collected more than a million drawings made by children around the world between the ages
of two and eight in a period between 1948 and 1966. From these drawings, Kellogg developed
a classification system that could describe the development of graphic expression in young
children from scribbles to more complete and complex graphic works. In 1969 Rhoda Kellogg
published the work Analyzing Children’s Art in which she analyses children’s scribbles. With
Kellogg, scribbles lose their "stage" character and acquire that of the "alphabet" of drawing.
Scribbles are considered by her as "supporting structures of drawing" or "basic linear elements"
of the same.
The "basic scribbles", all present in the drawings of two-year-old children, are:

Dot Roving enclosing line

Single vertical line Zigzag or waving line

Single horizontal line Single-loop line

Single diagonal line Multiple-loop line

Single curved line Spiral line

Multiple vertical line Multiple-line overlaid circle

Multiple horizontal line Multiple-line circumference

circle

Multiple diagonal line Circular line spread out

Multiple curved line Single crossed circle

Roving open line Imperfect circle

In this list we can recognize many of the signs used by Hervé Tullet in his ateliers and in his
books. The artist accompanies the children right into that catalogue of "basic scribbles" that
seem to be part of the first graphic experiences at all latitudes to make it a real alphabet that
allows different and multiple insights.
It is important to encourage children to leave graphic marks, to give space and time to
spontaneous gestures, to scribbles, to the fullness of the signs that sound in the silence of
the page. We can play in many ways even just "pausing" in scribbles: they can be giant or
microscopic, made with the whole body or just with a fingertip, they can be in a hurry or be tired,
want to jump or hug, be afraid or feel sad. As the artist Cy Twombly (an artist who could dialogue
with Tullet’s materials and proposals) also suggests, we can put aside the "conceptual" to recover
gesture, movement, tracing. Open marks, confused, immediate or interrupted ... allow children to
enter their hands, their movements. In the second part of this activity book, we explore new links
from Tullet’s work that allow the child to continue manipulating the material even in primary
school, opening up new possibilities for visual research.

©2020, H. Tullet e A. Falconi, La valigetta dell’artista, Trento, Erickson 23

24 ©2020, H. Tullet e A. Falconi, La valigetta dell’artista, Trento, Erickson
ACTIVITY A
CREATE YOUR OWN VISUAL ALPHABET
To play with the alphabet, to write through play, composing and decomposing
letters and graphic signs, we can propose to small groups to bind together
letters of the alphabet to the materials in the briefcase (see the example). In this
way, every group will have a visual dictionary and will be able to reinforce the
desire and the ability to write words also in an art atelier.

A B C D E

©2020, H. Tullet e A. Falconi, La valigetta dell’artista, Trento, Erickson 25

ACTIVITY b
CREATING VISUAL KEYS TO DRAW STORIES
With graphic shapes we can give origin to new stories following the artistic
experience of Warja Lavater (lta.hypotheses.org/396) with the series Les Imageries in
which she arranges shapes, colours and signs in order to create what she defines a
visual code that from personal becomes collective thanks to the key.
The visual code, in fact, is reported in the key with which every image and history
begins. Little Red Riding Hood (1965), for example, is a simple red dot; Hop-o’-My-
Thumb (1979) is a small blue point surrounded by a fluorescent green ring.
They are real graphic-visual rewritings which are open to the reader’s
interpretation, according to one’s own point of view.
Let’s make the same game with Tullet’s shapes.

The mother The wolf

Little Red Riding Hood The house

The grandmother The hunter

The woods The bed

26 ©2020, H. Tullet e A. Falconi, La valigetta dell’artista, Trento, Erickson