A little more than a year ago I proudly proclaimed the fact that I, too, am a reading teacher no matter how it much it might seem that reading in visual art and design does not naturally exist or belong. I'm happy to report that later I am still insistent on teaching reading in my content area!
One of my favorite ways to do this is to teach students to read directions and how to follow them exactly as they are written. I do this in graphic design by requiring them to do tutorials from one of my favorite photoshop reference books called The Photoshop CS3/CS4 WOW! Book. I have used this book for four years now and though that might seem like what it offers would be dated, I still feel like it's a great text to teach with. It offers all sorts of useful tricks, tips, and teaching of techniques in clear and concise ways that also include screen captures alongside the very technical but also user-friendly language.
This work was done almost three semesters ago by the 2D art and design students and I never got around to sharing it with you all! While it didn't pan out entirely as I had planned it would, I feel like the final works are still interesting and provided a great in depth study of lots of the principles of design and elements of art. I called this project endeavor "All Creatures Great and Small" since the subject matter was animals.
The inspiration of this project endeavor came from Heather Galler's Art on etsy. Clearly the students saw what Ms. Galler did and took a whole lot of creative liberties but I didn't have the heart to tell them not to be quite so ambitious and adventurous.
The students worked on poster board support and then used solvent based pens and markers to draw and color each of their works. I stressed the importance of using the positioning and arrangements of the patterns in order to show correct form as much as possible.
Can't remember where I saw this recently but another brilliant art education blogging teacher used the amazingness that is PowToon web-based design platform to make a really cool multimedia and fully animated and soundtracked video for the purposes of welcoming her students back AND refreshing their memories about classroom rules, procedures, and expectations. The program is sort of like Xtranormal except WAY better. (I mean A MILLION ZILLION times better.) It's currently in beta and mostly free but there is educators discount pricing which was only $60 for the year.
(Too rich for your taste? Well, I plunked down the money because I work with the school's marketing team, I might be able to finagle being reimbursed for it, AND I seriously love it so much I might use it over powerpoint or even Keynote from here on out.)
Anyway, I could not help but be inspired by this new and "shiny" technology and this week we are getting into the whole business of learning how to do critiques (both self and peer) and I thought this would be a great way to introduce the purpose of critiques, the process, and the layout of the goals and expectations. Here is the video short I just finished and while the learning curve started rather steep, it's a lot like iMovie (actually, I felt like it came more naturally to me even) and it was fun to do. You should try it out if you are interested in something new and unique to show your art students how creativity and creation can be stretched beyond paper, canvas, and other such traditional surfaces.
I promised this to you last week when I presented the lesson project idea of Mehndi Hand Sculptures and today I have the completed student work for you! This has been one of the most successful project endeavors of the Interactive Art History class in the (now) four years that I taught the class and I am seriously proud of how the students have done with this even with it only being the first time trying it. And? This is the second major project idea that I have done with Plaster of Paris so perhaps I have a signature medium for myself? I mean... does that even exist? Well, whatever, here is one more art education idea where Plaster of Paris is quite handy. *pun intended*
I feel like this is a great way to do the art of Zen Doodling and making it that much more challenging and impressive since it applies designs to a three dimensional surface. Some of the most interesting of designs were students who really attempted to depart from the minimum of simply sculpting the hand and then applying designs. The hands that were gestural were incredibly impressive and the students who attempted to add color to their hands - which made them decidedly less Mehndi in style - were even more successful overall. There were creative risks that some of the students endeavored to take and I am very proud of them for that alone.
This project held student interest from start to finish and I helped to keep them invested by encouraging them to make their design work as densely packed as possible. I did not discourage the use of color and while classic Mehndi designs have a sort of natural feminine flair to it that might have turned the guys off, I encouraged the guys to think of tribal design work instead of things that were floral in nature.
I will definitely be doing this project idea again and now that I have one round of experience with it I fully intend to try and raise the bar next year. I am already researching and working on how that will happen so watch out for me next Spring when it's time (again) for the Interactive Art History class. And if you do this project idea with your classes? Let me know! I love seeing how much better and different things look beyond my classroom.
One of my favorite things to do with my projector set-up is to use it to present e-book pages, student work, masterworks, etc. on the white board instead of the projector screen. Why? Because then I can write and draw things on top of and/or around the image in order to better tell and show the students different things that they need to remember for their work. This teaching methodology works just as well for Youtube videos, too!
You can see some of the labels I drew in order to help the students focus on key points for their tree paintings.
In addition to the labeling, I also wrote a bulleted list (not pictured) for the students that included items like, "Don't forget that the silhouette of a tree's foliage is ORGANIC in shape - not perfectly round and lollipop-like." I also made a connection with their prior knowledge from Science studies and said that the shapes of their tree foliage should be almost amoeba shaped and the trunks with their extending branches should be almost arteries with their vein systems. I LOVE drawing connections from visual art studies to core content areas!!!
Here is the Youtube selection I used for the "co-teacher" this time...
And here are the before and after works of the students' trees! This time I had them each quickly draw what they thought trees looked like and, as expected, there was lots of "lollipop" stylings initially. Luckily, they learned a lot and quickly too about how to go about doing a more realistic and painterly visual depiction of a tree! The improvement from most all of their befores to their afters is astounding in some cases and even the most advanced students learned how to improve their technique!
In this example, the before is very broccoli like with the trunk being stalk like and everything!
This student took it upon themselves to attempt a second tree (in the after) and was able to achieve great results too.
What an improvement from before to after, eh? I think this one was very successful with the value and color work too.
Actually a very advanced student's work but even the before is very broccoli like.
Much improved since the after doesn't have the exposed roots - though I get what they were going for.
I feel like some of the hardest (but most requested by them) techniques to teach are things like drawing/painting clouds and trees. Both are very similar in how you do them - and the students are slowly making that connection - but this repetitive exercise between what I shared yesterday and then today really help them to see that what looks so hard actually isn't that hard. Also, they are learning to see simpler shapes and masses within larger and more familiar forms (like trees and clouds) in order to better create them in their individual works.
The next step I took them to after this one with the trees (and yesterday's with the clouds) is to have them create a realistic sky with clouds. So, basically I am taking yesterday's work and having them apply it to today's so that they have a finished work of art. I am also going to encourage them to look up other tutorials like ones for waves or mountains in order for them to better understand how to combine different techniques to achieve a more realistic and refined landscape piece for the place of grace project that they are about to launch into.
One of the biggest woes that I heard the last time I did place of grace last semester was students who had issues doing the simple things like clouds and things. After doing these brief exercises with Youtube the way I have, I predict that the students will turn out even stronger work than last semester just because they will be more confident and will have a decent amount more working understanding and real experience to apply to their individual works.
And one last reason why teaching using Youtube as your co-teacher? If you have students who are out of class for any number of reasons, you can simply direct them to your collective of linked videos and they don't have to be totally behind because they missed in-class demos!
How do you feel about co-teaching methodology? Is it something you use at all? Do you like it? Love it? Or could you honestly just leave it?
I teach at a private high school currently but I used to teach core subject (Reading and then Social Studies) in a public middle school. While I don't have a requirement to use the co-teaching model anymore - both because of where and what I teach - I, honestly, miss it. Whether in a special education setting or not, I feel like it's an effective way to teach students especially for certain things. Now, visual art education is not something that would typically have co-teaching even in the public school because it's usually restricted to special education settings for core subjects alone. However, that doesn't stop me from trying to bring it into my visual art education classroom. Sometimes an extra set of hands in the classroom for the sole purpose of doing "hand over hand" type guiding would be awesome and it occurred to me that I could make it happen with the extra set of hands being my own!
Perhaps I am behind the game on this but I am discovering that Youtube is a wonderfully useful instructional tool to use in the art classroom specifically for the following reasons:
You can start and stop it or replay portions of it as often as needed
In real time demos, sometimes you can't redo certain steps but maybe one time for the students to see again so it can feel like you are using unnecessary amounts of materials.
When you are doing real-time demos you also can't see the students doing things alongside you as easily because you are the one in the front of the class.
If the students end up really going in the wrong direction while following you (in a real-time demo), they keep going that way (and using unnecessary amounts of materials, in turn) until it's too late to stop them. Of course, you can use their misstep as a teachable moment like anything else but? Well... I don't have an exorbitant amount of materials to use like this - do you?
Youtube or streamed video almost always yields a captive audience for this age-group. Even if the video is bad? Well, it's that much more compelling for them to watch from beginning to end.
First off, picking the right Youtube video is key. I have about 53 minutes of instructional time but even with that much time, I have to consider getting the students set up with their materials and then the stopping and starting and replaying of the video that will inevitably happen. Through trial and error I have discovered that five minutes running time is about the most ideal. Below is a video that runs slightly longer than that but not so much that you can't make up the time with just fast forwarding through it.
Here are some samples of what was turned out! Bear in mind that many of these student artists have incredibly limited experience in the studio arts. The 2D Design class is a foundational course which means many of them have never taken a high school art course before and maybe even never will again since taking this course satisfies a half fine art credit that they need for graduation. Considering all of the aforementioned, I would say the student work is very successful.
Some of my goals with this were the following:
Quick(-ish) skill building for the purposes of having more successful and realistic finished works in the Place of Grace painting project that they are about to embark on.
Help them to realize the importance of the integrity of the marks they leave in their work so they are more painterly and, in turn, produce more realistic depictions of things in the end
Teach them to paint what they see vs. what they think a cloud looks like
Build confidence within them so they can see that doing something the right way can be learned relatively easily, can be very fun, and makes a huge difference in the quality of their work in the end
Show them how to use color AND value together along with layering in order to show depth and dimension on a 2D surface
Prove to the students the importance and power of following directions just as they are given because it really does produce stronger and better results in the end
Complete an assessment for the creative processing of their individual paintings
Something that can be done in conjunction with this for the sake of really strong experiential learning and connection is by having them do a quick exercise before this where they draw/paint what they think a cloud looks like with no reference whatsoever about how it really should be done. They will likely draw the puffy, cartoon-like clouds and be convinced that is not only adequate but even successful visual depictions overall. Once they do the follow along with the Youtube demo at least one time they will see how easy it is to draw/paint realistic clouds and they will want to do it that way because it honestly does look so much better.
Tomorrow I will show you one more round of co-teaching with youtube along with student work that was before the demo and after they had completed it. I will also discuss where to take this skill-building and how to connect it with others in order to have a series of assessments to evaluate them from in the end.
This lesson idea originated from two different sources that I combined into one workable one for the high school art classroom. They are the following...
A pin from Pinterest that makes the Dick Blick idea three-dimensional and, in turn, more interesting I think.
I have been wanting to do this project for a good while after initially seeing it on Dick Blick but I couldn't bring myself to do it because I didn't like how the design work was on gloves which would essential leave the finished project flat and deflated. I don't remember when I stumbled upon the possible solution from pinterest (see above) but I was really excited about it because it really seemed to combined Dick Blick's idea with something ensured a (literally) solid product in the end.
Doing some backwards planning and visual deconstruction, I figured that plaster of paris would work very well to fill the glove. The question remained of how I would end up doing it because, based on my experience of working with plaster, I knew it wouldn't just be so easy to just pour wet plaster in and be able to call it done. I did about two trial runs very quickly by myself before I did it in class and took lots of mental notes and then I did an abbreviated demo for the Interactive Art History class. They previously worked with plaster of paris for the cave art project idea so that really helped them to know what to expect with the process required for this project.
Below is a video of the sculpting stage of this project where I was working with the plaster after it was poured into the glove and was starting to set and after the video (scroll down), you can see some picture of the students doing it themselves. Ideally you want to pair them up because four hands work best in order to make one finished sculpted hand. Kind of not totally efficient but... well.... I haven't figured out a better way than this so far.
And here is a picture of a sculpted hand that is finished that a student is now applying their mehndi line design onto the glove with Sharpie Ultra-Fine pen...
Because the students are all still working on this project, I don't have any finished work to show you but based on the time schedule that we are keeping, I suspect I can show you some finished work some time next week, so keep checking back to see some finished work!
Tomorrow I will show you the quick follow-up video to the above where I show you how to clean up dried plaster. [Updated: Finished student work can be accessed HERE via this link!]
Three or so years ago when I started this blog it was largely because I wanted to fill a niche that didn't even seem as if it existed in the first place. While there was an abundance of elementary and middle school art education blogs, it seemed like there were few (if any at all) blogs that specifically focused on high school art education! This sort of things made it very difficult for me - a just starting out high school art teacher - because, well... I felt like I was venturing into unknown territory with no metric or wisdom to draw from in order to be able to tell if/what I was doing right or terribly wrong.
Times have so changed though because this blog has been established and reasonably maintained (save for a few brief sabbaticals and interludes) to the point where my blog analytics regularly indicate that I average well over 100 hits per day for some of what I have shared here. One of the biggest drivers of hits is coming from pinterest. Check out this screenshot of all of the things that have been pinned from my blog...
I cannot tell you all how much it delights me to see that the things that I do in my classroom and then share online are things that are being carried out and about in order to serve as inspiration and instruction not only on the high school level but in other ways as well - at community art centers, in other grade levels, at the college level for beginning teachers. My blog analytics have regularly reflect that not only do my site visitors come from international locations but also places such as universities and board of education servers. I KNOW this means that I am connecting with other visual art professionals and that is just amazing to me.
From the beginning my goal has never been to be a professional blogger and have this be the way that it would happen. I don't blog to get rich or to be noteworthy and I have only wanted to share and be an active member of the art education and professional visual artist communities. While I know I still have a long ways to go with this blog, I am feeling so encouraged every day as I tangible evidence that the blog is growing and reaching more people every single day.
Thank you ALL OF YOU who visit and give me hits to this site because it really affirms me and what I have sought to do from the very beginning. While I believe that I probably won't win any huge awards or be majorly recognized in any way because of how and what I do here, it's enough for me to see my blog stats reflect how the blog is growing exponentially.
This lesson idea is not my own and was inspired by the book I so love called Drawing Lab for Mixed-Media Artists. The book suggests a creative exercise that challenges you to draw something silly or funny that someone says. I have seen this sort of thing elsewhere on the web (but I can't seem to find it to connect it here) and I have always loved the idea of this but I have never done it. This year and this semester's 2D Design class seemed to be the perfect time to take the idea for a spin.
One of the biggest challenges for me were collecting silly quotations said by kids that could be colorful and interesting enough to yield super imaginative drawings. You would think such a thing as this would be easy but actually it wasn't. A lot of the collective I found online featured "kids say the darnedest things"-type items that included bad language or otherwise very suggestive things that is just inappropriate for my high schoolers to attempt to take a part and then reassemble. After struggling to find maybe a handful of appropriate things I considered using my almost five year old daughter for fodder and consulting this small book that I keep with silly/funny things she has said or done. Surprisingly, only a few of them fit the bill for what I was looking for. Many of them were darn near impossible to try and imagine much less visually interpret in mixed-media works. The ultimate winner for me was when I stumbled upon a collective of cute and silly prayers that kids have said and people have submitted to online collectives. It was totally appropriate for my purposes because 1) it was faith-based and I teach at a Christian school and 2) none of the prayers had anything inappropriate but all would definitely guarantee some colorful and imaginative depictions.
Below are some of what the 2D Design students came up with along with the prayer snippets that they randomly picked from a bag. The goal was for them to be as literal as possible with their visuals in order to properly illuminate their prayer snippets. They used watercolor and ultra fine sharpie ink pen on aquabords.
"Dear God, thank You for the baby brother but what I prayed for was a puppy."
"Dear God, did you mean for giraffes to look like that or was it an accident?"
"Dear God, did the unicorns miss the ark? Too bad the skunks didn't miss."
"Dear God, I heard the moon was made of cheese. Tonight half of it is missing. Did you get hungry?"
"Dear God, I heard the moon was made of cheese. Tonight half of it is missing. Did you get hungry?"
"Dear God, I know you see everything. Please don't tell my mom about my bad test grade!"
I don't know that I will attempt this project idea again but if I do I might likely do it as one of the first project endeavors for the 2D Design or Graphic Design class. It seems to have great potential to serve as a bit of a pre-assessment sort of tool for the purposes of gauging skill/technique in beginning artists and it also is fun without sacrificing the opportunity for the students to really gain something important from it which is to force themselves to think in the most colorful and imaginative ways possible.
Without further adieu... I present to you The ROYGBIV project in all of it's finished glory!!!!
The installation makes the gallery hallway such a happy place!
Once the students got to the point where they were able to start installing their individual sections of the total installation and they got to see it all come together they were really motivated to get the whole project DONE and it took only a matter of a few days for them to all really pitch in and get things hung up and adjusted no matter what subdivisions they originally volunteered themselves for.
One element that was a final "finishing touch" was hanging painted (with tempera) sheets of acetate sheeting on alternating window panels all the way down the hallway. The hope was that the natural light could shine through the painted sheeting and then cast colored light into the hallway. It didn't work but it did look pretty interesting from the outside and it has served as great encouragement for people to see it across the "quad" and then come walk through the gallery hallway when they otherwise didn't have a reason to venture that way in the first place.
Next year when we do a different ROYGBIV installation I will allot money in the budget for colorful cellophane.
The sun group had some serious challenges with trying to rig up something that would support the overall structure, girth, and unexpected weight of the finished work. Fishing line did not work after trying it multiple times so the winning solution was to use 14 gauge aluminum sculpture wire that supported the sun from three different points. It doesn't look like a literal interpretation of what the sun looks like but I think it works being abstract the way it is.
The sun is suspended at one end of the hallway where it can hang the highest from the ground.
Obviously a good number of the rainbow drops didn't hold their shape perfectly but I think it's OK. The student artists who worked on them weren't totally disappointed and I was really proud with the way they pushed through to the end even when it was very VERY challenging and discouraging at times. Their perseverance is so commendable and they really pulled things together in the end.
And the clouds group? Well, they had a bit of an unexpected advantage from the get-go because they didn't have to figure things out since they followed some directions found online. *shrug* They did have one of the messiest portions of the whole installation though so they had their fair share of challenge at times. Their original plan was to shade the clouds a little to make them look "stormy" but in the end that wasn't necessary and they simply used some of the natural darkness that was cast from the inside out that derived from the newspaper that they used for the center form of the sculpturing!
For a second try at studying installation art with the 3D Design class, I would say this attempt was successful. So many people - students and faculty/staff alike - have commented really positively on the entire installation and part way through the hanging of everything I already had inspiration come upon me for what will be done for next year's endeavor! If you can believe it it will be much of what you see here PLUS a little bit of some extra that is pure fun and lightheartedness. Hard to believe it can be bigger than this? I guess you'll have to hold me to that and visit me next year to see what it will be all about.
Thanks so much for sticking with me for this week long series! Next week is Spring Break for my school but I will be queuing up some postings that have been waiting around for their chance to be shared in addition to working on graduate school assignments and also (FINALLY!!!) doing some painting at the easel at my home studio.
Have a great weekend! See you next week!
This installation
art study was student-centered and collaboratively designed and
constructed (across two classes). It utilized paper sculpting and papier
mache, string wrapping, spray painting and brush painting, fiber
application in order to create a sun, clouds, and rainbow display
suspended from the ceiling of the student art
gallery hallway. It was originally presented in a week long series that
showed the planning and creative processing, the beginning part of the sculpting/working stage, the point just about when everything was done being sculpted, and then some notes about when things went awry and how those things were dealt with. The final view of it can be found HERE. This project was meant to be a re-imagining of The Ombre Experience project idea.
[This is from a while back but it's taken me a bit to get caught up so pardon me.]
Do you do pre-tests/assessments in visual art?
This is from the very first assignment for the 3D Design class as a way for me to assess where each of them was starting from - skillsets, general understanding of art and design, etc. The inspiration for each of the sculptures was for them to sculpt what it feels like to look at a rainbow. Essentially, they were each sculpting an emotion which was challenging for some but at the same time many of them enjoyed the challenge and really sought to tackle it well. They were only allowed to use paper and simple adhesives like tape and white glue and they were instructed to do their best to make it as clean in construction as possible.
After they spent about three days working on it I had another class (a 2D Design class) critique and visually "read" what the sculpture was attempting to communicate while the 3D Design classes critiqued and read the 2D Design pre-assessments. All of the students were very interested in find out what the other students read from their work and I was able to read where they were in their art understandings and abilities! It was pretty successful overall.
As an art teacher I get bored easily with lesson and project ideas. Does this happen to you?
For this reason, I do my best to not repeat lesson and project ideas if I can help it but if that has to happen, create an iteration of time to happen such that there is at least a semester or even entire school year in between repeats.
That being said? A favorite of the 3D Design class I teach is clay sculpting cartoons. I like to do this with them as a bit of a final/finale project and (in turn) a reward for all that they have learned and hard work they have invested through the whole semester. And while I usually love/hate dealing with clay because I have a shared studio classroom, by the end of the semester I usually have full confidence in the skillsets and individual investments of each student to know that they will not waste any of their time or high quality materials that they are provided.
The last time I did this project was at the end of the Fall semester of 2010. It is such a favorite project that I try to let at least one 3D Design class do it per year but as it ended up happening, it didn't work out last year because of the budget. This year though, I was able to make it happen and it was quite a success. Here are the finished pieces from this year...
This one started out as Bambi but structurally it just wasn't working it out so I helped the student artist to steer it this way.
I had the students do a few different things this year than I have in previous ones. One of the major ones was they were required to make armatures and then cover them with clay in order to ensure that each of their finished pieces were a little more structurally sound and less likely to break apart. Doing this sort of worked in teaching them that the inside part that you don't see is just as important as the outside that you do see but not all of the armatures worked out so well. I attribute this to the fact many of them didn't use clay thick enough to fully encase the armatures and as the clay shrunk when it set, the armatures were popping and pushing out in weird ways.
Some of the things that remained the same though were the fact that we used boneware clay as we always do, we fully utilized clay sculpting boxwood tools that you can buy in a class set for a really reasonable price, and the students were each required to draw a front view, side view, and aerial view of their design ideas in order to help them better visualize what they would eventually have to do and then for me to be able to help them if they had issues rather than relying on their verbal directions that go something like this, "Well... it kind of has this thing that goes around and then comes back again and it's kind of big but not really." o_O Seriously. I cannot help a student artist who is going to give me that kind of information to go from in order for me to be able to help them.
All of this being said? I continue to very much like this lesson idea to keep using it in years to come.
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