To Collage or Not to Collage...

I have approached this project in a few different ways in my two year career as an art teacher, and each time, I think that I have improved the concept, but each time, I am still not sure. Let me take you through the journey of the Grade 7 Collage Assignment.

Attempt #1: The Collage Portfolio.
In my first year in the art room, I organized most assignments into themed portfolios which consisted of a few assignments. The first Collage Portfolio consisted of three collaging projects.

#1. Collaborative Color Wheel. In a group of three, on a large piece of Mayfair, they were to design an interesting twist on the regular color wheel, and collage in the colors using magazines.

#2. Color Collage. Students chose an image which they liked, and which was multi-tonal. The purpose of this collage was color matching. They had just studied the colors of the color wheel and practiced finding those colors in magazines. This was a continuation of this color matching skill.

#3. Grey Scale Collage, same size as the color collage, and of the same picture as the color collage. Instead of using magazines for this one though, they had to create a grey scale with their pencil, and then tear that up to create their grey scale collage. The purpose of this was to take the next step of studying colors, and matching them to different shades of grey. Which colors were closer to a light grey, which ones were closer to a dark shade?

It was immediately clear that there was way too much collage in this Portfolio. It took a very long time, the assignments were too large, and the students quickly got tired of the same, tedious techniques. On almost all course evaluations, students said that there was way too much collage. I still thought though that the collage technique, the color matching, combined the with transferred technique of grey scale matching, was an important skill to learn. So I modified it this year.

Attempt #2: Double Collages.
This year, I took out the collaborative color wheel collage. These students were in Grade 6 Art with me last year, and so they had done a previous color wheel assignment. I felt that they did not need to study those colors again. This time, we just did the two collages, the color and the grey scale, in the same way as before, but on paper half the size as last year. Some pictures from this are below.

Color collage in the making.

Beautiful mosaic collage of a parrot.

The beginnings of a torn grey scale collage beside the completed color collage.

A beautifully finished bird, beside the beginnings of a mosaic grey scale collage.

The color collages turned out beautifully. The grey scale collages were much more difficult, and many did not turn out as the students did not use enough contrasting greys. There were too many middle greys used. In the course evaluation, many students said that they liked the color collage. They found ti challenging, but loved how they turned out. Many also said that the grey scale collage was too challenging. They found it difficult to match the colors with the shades of grey, and as a result, they felt discouraged by the process and the final product.

So, I have a new group of Grade 7 Art students, who will be beginning this project in a few weeks. I question a few things about this project and potential modifications...

1. Should I go smaller? It is a tedious process, and I don't think that the size of the paper would make a difference in their achievement of the skill. Would they enjoy it more if it didn't take as long to reach the desired result?
2. Just because a student finds the process tedious and in turn becomes frustrated, does that mean that it is necessarily an unworthy assignment? I don't think so, but an important part is the product, so if they are finding the process tedious, and the product is turning out poorly, that is when the assignment probably isn't working.
3. Should I eliminate the grey scale collage, and just do the color collage? The students learn the skill of color matching, and end up having a positive experience with collaging. Is the addition of the grey scale collage ruining that positive experience? Is the skill of transferring color to a grey scale possibly too advanced, or unnecessary?
4. Is the whole idea of the traditional collage too...traditional? Is there another way that I could get across the same skills sets of color matching?

So many questions... the big one remains... to collage, or not to collage...