Pinterest for the Visual Art Education classroom

How do you feel about social networking? What's your favorite avenue for that? Are you a Facebooker? I recently decided not to be for my own personal interests and concerns. I used to be an avid Facebook user but it just seemed like it was counterintuitive and counterproductive to actually connecting people as it supposedly seeks to do. So... I quit it. (Facebook.) Despite what this might suggest, I am not against social networking. I mean, I'm an avid blogger (obviously) and I am questionably addicted to instagram. Another type of social networking I know and love? It's Pinterest!

I have been on Pinterest since it first started. I am blessed enough to be very well networked and so I got one of the earlier invitations that were given out. As Pinterest has grown and more people have discovered it, it has been exciting to sometimes even stumble upon people's pins made from my very own website!!! I know a ton of teachers who use it for lesson planning and classroom organization and I have used it for that very same purpose. Recently though, it occurred to me to use it for something other than just inspiring my curriculum and instruction.

The 2D Design class is starting a new project of painting where they are learning how to paint from/by photo and image reference. This endeavor was NOT planned and I had much different plans but I veered from them about two weeks ago and I have been praying about it and knowing that I need to make it happen for my student artists. Trouble with all of this is that teaching painting is something I am definitely NOT (entirely) confident or properly trained to do. Still... that isn't stopping me. *wink*

Taking notes from my amazing painting professor from the summer course I just took, I am crash coursing my students on understanding how to use visual composition in order to help them intentionally design and thoughtfully create works of high quality and successful visual art. One thing that has really helped me is the book called Mastering Composition. Another thing I am doing? I am looking at a TON of different types of visual art examples (masterworks, pins from people on Pinterest, personal works, etc.) with the students. AND(!) I am encouraging the students to DRAW on them in order to help "unpack" how and why the composition on each piece is either really successful or not so much.

Last week I projected one of my Pinterest boards up for my classes and we went through multiple photographs and I had draw on the white board all of the leading lines, forms, and space that helped to contribute to the successful visual composition. The goal is that by doing this, they will learn to read composition so that they can translate what they read to be strong composition into their own work. 

WiPs: "Extra-dimensional" - OpArt study | 3D Design

Every year I do an Op-art study but normally I keep it to the 2D Design classes. I have had this idea pinned to my art education project board on pinterest for I don't even know how long and this year I felt it was finally time for me to give the multi-dimensional work of optical illusion studies room to expand in the 3D Design studio art class. 

So here are some questions I have been thinking about... when you teach in your classroom... 

1. What do you use to inform your teaching decisions or methodology of how you actually instruct? 

2. Do you ever use visual art and teaching the creative process as the vessel to deliver a lesson/message beyond just teaching students techniques and art appreciation?

One of my goals (always) is to teach my students just as much about visual art as about life. Because I am a follower of Christ, this means that my worldview is shaped by Christ's teachings in the holy gospel. I see my mission field as being my classroom and my school community and it is always my goal to align the hearts and minds and SOULS of my students with belief in and devotion to the Lord's intelligent design and message of salvation and grace.

Now, I understand that I might have already lost a whole lot of my readers already based upon what I just said. (Seriously. They were gone as soon as I made mention that I am a Christian.) I am going to keep talking though to whomever is still here - either because you, too, believe in what I believe, or maybe because you are just curious about what more I could possibly say.

Here's something that you might not expect (that is VERY personal): I am a Christian now and I work at a Christian-school (this means I work in ministry) and I am very VERY vocal about my beliefs and commitment of being a Christian but I have not always been this way. I was not raised in the type of community I now live and work within and I only committed myself to walking and talking in this life of Christian faith almost nine years ago in my 20s. Before that, I led a life of serious debauchery (for lack of any other better word) and it has cost me an immense amount that I have had to make amends in order to find the peace and providence I now have in my life. My life has been a testament of things that include serious abuse, major illness, pushing myself to the brink of death (more than once), and then being delivered from all of it. And the punchline there - the delivery from all of it - came in the form of Christ and my commitment to following His teachings and that is how I came to be a Christian. 

Anyway, perhaps at one point I might share my testimony in greater detail than the very abbreviated version above but that's not the point here. The point is that my own experiences of life and with visual art have taught me that visual art and the creative process can be a really beautiful vessel for sharing some of the serious life (and faith) lessons that I have so far. I regularly use projects and daily conversation with my students during class to "unpack" (as one of my good colleagues like to say) all of the incredible things the Lord has blessed me with in my life. I even mean the blessings that might not seem like blessings because when they were happening and even after they happened they were really very tragic. (That's not an exaggeration by any stretch.)

I am a firm believer that the Lord gave us visual art in order for us to use it to understand Him better and draw nearer to Him. I believe that when we create (even for people who are not believers in Him), it fills us with something that is indescribable because HE is indescribable and when we create as He created (because we were created in His likeness and can imitate Him every and any time we create) - we are only adding into His intelligent design that already exists. 

Earlier today, I ran into my department head and we made an attempt to update each other on current doings and happenings in no less than five minutes. She reminded me of this one thing: "If God brings you to it, He will bring you through it!" How easily I forget such a truth exists especially  in the moments when I need to remember it most.

When I introduced this project idea to my 3D Design students, I certainly did let them know that it was something meant to teach them about Optical Illusion artwork but the overarching theme (that they should push themselves to understand) is that the Lord is multi-dimensional. He exists both within and beyond the boundaries of time and space and sometimes (like optical illusions) what He really looks like is far from what He is. Apart from optical illusion art, He can put a message within a mess, He can take a tragedy and turn it into a triumph, and He can use something broken and transform it into something amazingly and astoundingly beautiful. And the way He does this is through us and with us. This means that despite what we might ever feel or think or see - He is sovereign and almighty and that means there is nothing above or below what He can and will do. It's just a matter of us submitting ourselves to Him and acknowledging the tools He readily offers to us to accomplish His might works.

If you are not a believer and you have made it this far in this posting, I thank you for giving me this opportunity to share this much with you. I know it's not easy to hear this type of thing and be preached to because I honestly was once a disbeliever and a non-believer myself. It kills me sometimes to have to take stock of my own life and realize how much I had to go through in order to finally see and ACCEPT and embrace what real truth is since (in the process) I have lost so much. Still, I can look at the whole picture (the BIG picture) and see that if I had to lose my whole world to gain the amazing grace, always new mercies, and everlasting faithfulness of the Lord, I guess then all of that and even more would make it worth it on any and every given day of the week.

Lesson idea: Continuous Line Art - Wire sculpting | 3D Design

This lesson idea is one I haven't done in quite a while but found I found these pictures (on an old portable hard drive) and thought they were worth sharing!

I did this project with the 3D Design students my first year teaching visual art ever and I led them into the project with a continuous line drawing study. Each of the students was required to come up with one object that they would sculpt in 14 gauge aluminum wire (you can purchase it here from DickBlick.com) but before they could sculpt it, they had to show me their idea drawn with a continuous line. When they had completed the continue line drawing of their chosen object, they each received 90 feet of it that they were not permitted to cut in order to echo what they learned in the continuous line drawing exercise.

Overall, this project idea was a big hit but it I also couldn't push it to last for any more than one solid week of class meetings. That's pretty quick for me because my goal (from the beginning) has always been to do longer term project endeavors. I believe the students turned out very successful and interesting samples of work but it went very fast for them (during both years that I taught it) and I don't know that they learned anything super significant other than that wire wrapping is cool and fun.

If the future I would really push the students to focus on contours lines when they draw in continuous line technique and I would definitely push them to not do just any object but one that has purpose and meaning to it once it is fully sculpted.

When work isn't really work

Do you have any traditional school events that you participate in and look forward to every year? I do. It's my school's Field day!!!

Normally, events like Field day occur toward the end of the year versus at the beginning of the year but I teach at a private Christian school and we do a lot of things different than how other schools do it. Field day is one of those things. For us? Field day happens within the first month or so of the school year and it is a REALLY BIG DEAL. But before I explain how and why it is a big deal, here is a little bit of background in order to fully explain field day.

I, along with every other faculty/staff member, serve as a mentor to a group of 10-12 students (usually same sex until senior year when there are mixed groups). The group is comprised of the same 9th-11th grade students year after year and I meet with them once a week (the time is within the class schedule) in order to connect personally with them and just generally form a solid (closer) bond/friendship within the school community. Basically, it's like the idea of a homeroom or advisory class/group but on a whole lot more personal level. I am permitted and encouraged to share my testimony of faith with them, guide them through devotionals and scripture study, lead them in prayer as informed by their requests or notations of gratitudes, in addition to just serve as an older (and wiser?) individual in case they are having challenges of any sort - whether personal or academic.

(OK. Now I can explain Field day a little bit better!)

My school does Field day at the beginning of the year instead of the end because it is intended to serve as a bonding experience for each mentor group from the get-go. Each mentor group competes against other mentor groups and team-building/oriented type activities (rather than just competing grade against grade) AND each mentor group also dresses by a group-decided-upon theme! My group has always been Team Elle Woods (like from Legally Blonde) because of my last name and also because it's meant to be kind of silly and fun and funny since I am far from girly and frilly the way the Legally Blonde Elle Woods is known to be. The point of dressing up though is to be a little crazy so my group of girls (who were deliberately matched to me and my personality) and I have great fun dressing up head-to-toe in pink, purple, and all things super girly.

So. That's basically Field day. And we just had ours recently and it was SO much fun. This year was even more fun though because they changed things up and added a community service component to the front half of the day where each mentor group worked together for a few hours in the local surrounding communities to be good stewards of our time and talents and help out in ways that others might have really needed it! My group was able to have the great blessing to work at a local playschool center finishing a mural that was in desperate need of more hands and feet to finish it! Here is my group hard at work...

This was the first year that we did a morning of service before an afternoon of pure fun and silliness but the service morning was such a hit that we are absolutely going to be doing it again next year. The other day I did some debriefing with my mentor girls and they said that even though the service morning as a lot of work and really tired them out by the time the afternoon rolled around, they really REALLY loved putting their hands, feet, and hearts to work at helping to lift up our surrounding communities.

Lesson Idea: Our Common Threads - Printmaking | 2D Design

In this introduction to printmaking project, some of the learning objectives included the following:

• Create original works as inspired by the masterworks of printmaking artists such as Andy Warhol and Claes Oldenburg
• Visually present social and cultural commentary (explained below) from a Christian worldview
• Learn how to design and create limited edition prints from start to finish
• Use a 2D surface to show a 3D image/form
• Learn and use visual art vocabulary of printmaking

I kicked off this project with a Keynote presentation of printmaking that focused on the works of Warhol and Oldenburg so that they students could see and discuss examples of Pop Art. We took the idea of what Pop Art does - glorifying the already glorified - and we attempted to create designs that did  a little bit of the opposite by picking every day object and glorifying those. The students were instructed to pick objects that would be owned by the "haves" just as much as the "have nots." They were to think about and be able to verbalize the reasoning of why their object might be something the "haves" take for granted while the "have nots" might really prize for specific reasons. We had lots of in-class discussions about the differences between the haves and have-nots and I also share the work of photographer James Mollison in the collective he created called Where Children Sleep. (I showed them the website but I also have the printed book - which is outstanding - and the students were awed by what they saw.)

The students used scratch-art foam printing plates to create their printing matrices and they went through an exhaustive process (as framed by this original instructional method that I developed and have been using for all of my lesson plans) in order to go from inspiration to as series of four limited edition prints per student. Each student was required to destroy their individual printing matrices right after their fourth impressions were made in order to absolutely ensure that their prints would all be limited editions.  Why limited editions? Well, because I want them to feel as much like true artists as possible! I posted something of the creative working process last week and HERE IS THAT POSTING if you want to see what we did and how we did it.

Here is a sampling of some of the amazing print sets I will be going through to evaluate and grade. I am SO proud of what the students designed and created but I'm also really overwhelmed by the amount of artwork that I now have to grade!!! Normally it's only one piece per student. Requiring the students to do a four part series of work basically quadrupled my work load. Oh well. It's worth it. (Or I keep telling myself that.)

I think these prints - shown in two different orientations - were very successfully created.

This particular student artist is VERY naturally talented at drawing specifically so her design was very well done.

This is another student who is great at drawing and has terrific attention to detail. (Obviously.)

I am not sure if the misspelling of the word 'homeless' was on purpose or not but knowing this student, it's probably safe to assume that it was completely intentional. Such clever students I have!

This design was so simple but so successful! I had a hard time picking which print to share with you. 

One of the few prints that was done in grey ink. I am such a fan of grey but I love how this student mixed the color and then applied the ink so it resulted in having a very subtle vignette to this print.

I appreciate the distressed quality of this print. I also think the color combination helps to add to its success.

This is one of my favorites overall. The design of the plate itself was wonderful and the use of color to make it look like the color of the flame and then the black that represents charring? And the distressed look of the ink? AWESOME!

I really enjoy the simplicity of this one and the fact that the student used just one single color. 

This project was a HUGE hit for the students and I will most definitely do a printmaking project again with the 2D class. It was just enough of an introduction to this artform that it really whet their palettes and left them hungry to do more art of this type and... well... any type really. Now that this project is over they are super excited to get started on the next one (which is even more challenging). It's all about strategic planning and I am delight to report that my strategy is playing out very nicely. *wink*