In Semester One, I shared Art 9 with the other Art Teacher at my school. She divides her art courses into 4 project areas; Drawing, Painting, Sculpture and Design. In the first semester, for the design component of the course, we did Tissue Paper Windows. It was my first time teaching this particular lesson, and I found many more obstacles and difficulties with this project than I did reward.
This project was all about designing a simple composition focusing on the positive and negative space, the shapes that make up an object as well as refining some controlled fine motor skills. The process of designing the image with the stained glass effect of the thick black lines is not a
bad process and certainly teaches the students some great lessons. The finished products were mostly wonderful, but it very easy to make a mistake, and using the tissue paper was, of course, a very delicate material. Here are pictures of some of the finished student pieces that turned out really nicely.
Food for Thought:
Size: If I were to do this again, I would do it MUCH smaller. I had them working on large pieces of black Mayfair paper, and it just took took long.
Simplicity: I would emphasize the importance of keeping the image and the design simple. The simpler the shapes, the nicer the end product was. The majority of peices that did not turn out well were quite complicated, and had too much going on.
Thick lines: Keeping as much of the black paper as possible, and keeping your lines thick is keep to adding the tissue paper. Many students went too thin with lines, and this caused many problems. When they were cutting the black spaces out, the exacto knifes would tear the lines if they were too thin. Secondly, when they were gluing on the tissue paper into the empty spaces, the thin lines gave very little space for error, and so their tissue paper had to be added on very carefully.
Stress versus Success: There were so many students who experienced frustration and stress over this assignment and normally, I would say a little frustration is not necessarily a bad thing, but combined with the fact that there were so few students who felt that feeling of pride and success in their finished product, is it worth it?
Notan Designs
So, second semester, the other art teacher and I were no longer sharing the course. I stuck with her structure of the course, but, I decided to switch it up a little bit. I wanted a project that still stuck with the original "design" objectives, but something that more students could find success in, and more could find a challenge. The wonderful world of Pinterest led me to the Notan Design project.
I began the lesson with this instructional video that I found on an elementary art teacher blog; Art. Paper. Scissors. Glue!
Click on the following link to check out the video: Notan Design Blog Post and Video
Begin with a 6 inch x 6 inch square. I suggested black, but left the color open to the students depending on their design and theme that they are trying to convey. Draw the design with a pencil or white color pencil and color in the shapes that you will be cutting. This is important if your design is complex. If it is a more simple design, this step may be unnecessary.
The next step is to cut it all up. Exacto knifes and scissors both work, preference depends on the student, and the design. I provided the students will baggies to keep all the pieces in, as it is necessary to save all pieces, and some are quite small and get lost easily.
The next step is planning out the layout. Depending on the complexity of the design, there are different ways to attack this part. Because my shapes were all quite similar to each other, and I am a little OCD with artistic perfection, I decided to trace each shape into place and number each shape.
This required patience, but as I said, was not necessary for all designs. Most students found their own ways to keep themselves organized, and those who didn't, discovered quickly the importance of planning for certain projects!
Finished product!
Here are some finished student examples! They all turned out so well!
Food For Thought:
Supplies. I really need to figure out a way to keep track of our supplies. During this project two of the most important supplies, glue sticks and scissors, went missing. Students were having to share scissors, and at one point we only have two glue sticks for a class of 25! How do we keep track of our supplies in the art room? How do we encourage students to take care of the supplies we have, for example, returning glue sticks without caps? Any suggestions?
Challenge: This project definitely was not as challenging as the previous terms design project. Some students completed this project very quickly, without feeling the need to challenge themselves at all. Others really took the time to create a challenging composition. Both levels turned out nicely, but I am not sure if the easier route that some students took rests well with me. How can I take a fairly simply project idea, and instill the desire to challenge oneself within my students? Maybe I just need to keep looking for the right design project?
Here are a few recent drawing assignments that I tried out this year! The first is a landscape assignment that I did with my Grade 6 classes, and the second is an artist research assignment that I did with my Grade 9 classes.
Grade 6 Layered Landscapes:
This assignment had 3 main objectives.
Students will understand and demonstrate how to represent foreground, middle ground and background.
Students will create an original fantasy landscape incorporating multiple layers and additional images.
Students will experiment with oil pastels on black paper.
We began the lesson by talking about foreground, middle ground and background. I had some students pose like statues, and the rest of us pointed out what was closest to us, in the middle and farthest away. We then talked about photographs and how, for compositional purposes, photographers often think in terms of layers to create interesting, deep, visual effects. We looked at a few photographs of landscapes and again, pointed out the layers together. From here, I showed a short video from Youtube called Foreground, Middleground, Background in Art Class (found below), which highlights how layers have been used in many famous paintings to create depth!
After the video, I did a demo of the project. I begin by talking about landscapes and brainstorming various ideas that they could use. It could be a realistic landscapes, like a beach, or an fantasy landscape, like Candy land. The were to begin by sketching in their sketchbooks an idea for a simple landscape that has the three layers that we discussed earlier. They were to show this to me once they were finished. When a student came to show me their sketch, I had them point out the three layers to me. This helped me to know that they understood the concept and caught those who did not understand early, before they began the final peice.
Next, they took a black piece of paper and redrew their idea using a white oil pastel.
The next step, is my favorite part, because the kids always panic when I tell them that they now have to tear it apart. They must, carefully, tear along the lines that they drew so that they have the 3 layers in separate pieces. You could have them cut it apart, but the torn look adds a nice 3D element to the finished piece and helps to break apart the layers a little more. It is important to note here that the simpler the initial drawing is, the easier the tearing will be. They can always add more detail later, but if they make initial sketch too complicated, the tearing will be a disaster. Another tip that I learned from doing this is to have them label each layer on the back so that they know which one is which.
From here, they get a new sheet of paper, and glue the layers back together. Begin with gluing down the background and working towards the foreground, and overlap each layer by just the slightest. This, again, helps add to the to depth and 3D effect.
Once everything is glued down, they may now begin to go back into the landscape and add color and detail using oil pastels!
As an added effect, I had them create two more objects that they wanted to stand out, like a bird, or a cloud. They drew them on a scrap piece of black paper, tore them out and glued them on top of everything else.
Here are a few of the works in progress! It is difficult to see the layered effect of the torn paper in these images, but in reality, it is quite visible.
Food for Thought:
Some students really rushed this project. The use of the oil pastels was messy, and the layering was unclear. Is this because of the nature of the project? Or is this the nature of a Grade 6 student, as I have seen this with other projects as well in Grade 6? Or is this merely the nature of the specific student? Regardless, how do I encourage thoughtful, attention to detail and finishing quality in Grade 6? I rarely accept an assignment the first time a student comes to me and says that it is finished. I will often give a suggestion for an area of improvement and have them sit down once more and work on that. How can I get them to begin doing more self-regulation?
Grade 9 Artist Pages:
This assignment began as a quick sub plan that turned into something much more successful than I thought it would. The objectives of this assignment were:
Students will research and visually represent an artist if their chosing.
All aspects of the page will represent the artist, such as the style of drawing, the color choices, the media choices, the font, the images, the layout, etc.
The page must also include 5 facts about the artist and 5 facts about the artists artwork.
So it was a sort of research project with a twist. They student had to visually represent their chosen artist. I told them to imagine the artist was doing this themselves, so every choice that they made had to be based on something they learned about their artist. If they didn't know what colors to use, they had to go find out what kinds of colors their artist normally used.
Here are a few examples of some finished pieces!
Sorry that the image is sideways, I can't figure out how to rotate it once I get them in here. I will it before next time. :)
This student did not do a visual artist, but rather asked to do a musician. I thought, why not, they are both very pure forms of personal expression, music and art. It turned out nicely.
The majority of assignments turned out extremely well, and some students began to get really creative with materials. The assignments that did not turn out as well were clear examples of students who had not done the research and who did not really understand their chosen artist.
Food for thought:
I think this would be a great assignment to open up for more choice. I really intended it to be a sub plan for 2-4 classes and it ended up taking closer to 8. Because of this I had them do it on plain white paper, and encouraged them to stay with simple media (except for a few who insisted and I could not refuse!) But after seeing the possibilities, why not allow them more freedom in media choice? Sculpture? On canvas? It is Grade 9, and what a great opportunity to demonstrate some higher order thinking skills, individuality, and pushing their own limits?
I wonder if the text, the 10 facts, are even necessary to include? I half included that criteria so that I knew that they had done the research, and so that they would really understand the artist, but the majority of students demonstrated their understanding of the artist visually so well, that the words seemed excessive. Maybe this would just be a preliminary criteria, collect the research in your sketchbook, show it me, and somehow represent that information visually as well? I am unsure of this...
