Trash to Treasure (High School Art Mini-Lesson)

This mini-lesson was published as a "Clip Card" in the February issue of SchoolArts Magazine:

The Art Problem
Students will work with the concept of nature vs. culture as they create a unified painted and drawn composition based on a combination of man-made and natural objects found on a walk.

Materials
(Note: this challenge could be approached with any number of media, so use whatever you have.)
3 to 5 man-made or natural objects found on a walk(s)
Pencils
Watercolor Paper
Watercolor (limit palette to 3 related and neutralized colors)
Brushes
Sharpie marker

Procedures
1. Take students, each one armed with a resealable plastic bag, on short walks or "treasure hunts" over the course of several days. Or, assign the walks as "homework." On the walk, ask students to pick up both man-made and natural objects avoiding anything dangerous or excessively dirty.
2. Ask students to choose a combination of 3-5 of the objects, most of which are unified by shape, but 1 or 2 that contrast. (For the artwork accompanying this post, Grace used a cup with a lid and straw, a tape dispenser, a ziplock bag and acorns.)
3. Once students have chosen their objects, ask them to create one or more thumbnail sketches of their objects, emphasizing unity and movement through shape and weighted line, as well as emphasis through a contrasting shape. Encourage them to "zoom in" and crop.
4. Help each student select the best composition to enlarge. Once they have transferred the drawing, ask them to further emphasize the elements and principles mentioned above in three related and neutralized color washes and Sharpie marker.

Student Extension
Photograph and print out in black and white each students drawing and ask them to emphasize a different set of elements and principles, e.g. positive and negative space.

Student Artwork Credit: Grace G. (Watercolor and black Sharpie marker)

Compositional Strategies--Mini Lesson

Ideas come in all kinds of packages. Yesterday, I received a beautiful poster from SCAD. As soon as I unfolded it, I knew exactly what I would do with it: a Compositional Strategies classroom competition. The prize: a sketchbook I had received through a promotion.

This week and last, I had been working with my students on Compositional Strategies: a series of specific design strategies that they can turn to--and adapt in their own ways--when trying to resolve compositional issues in their work.

I use a series of jpgs from my teaching-artist mentor Nicole Brisco's sketchbook that illustrates each of the strategies, along with photocopoies of a drawing I made. I use the latter as a worksheet in which they identify the various strategies. The list of strategies is organic and growing and can, essentially, include any approach to composition that you favor.

Most of them help create Unity, though some relate to Focal Point, Movement and connecting positive and negative Space. Included are such things as:

• Repeated Shapes, Colors, etc.
• Geometric Shape to Isolate a Focal Point
• Subliminally Repeated Patterns (e.g. hatch marks and stripes)
• Continuous Line to Unify Sides of a Composition or Foreground and Background
• Extended Lines (from the edges of objects)
• Repeated Motif to Create Movement
• A Motif Extrapolated from a Pattern (e.g. a square "pulled out" of a plaid pattern)
• Insets (pictures within pictures--sometimes 1, but often in a series of 3)
• Echo Lines (like concentric ripples when a pebble is dropped in water)
• Halos (to separate two areas that would otherwise merge, e.g. an object against a ground of the same color)
• Text in the Ground (handwriting, print, stenciled letters)
• Stylized View of an Object from an Unexpected Perspective to Create a Repeating Motif
• Object Repeated as a Modeled Drawing, Contour Drawing and Silhouette

The competition was simple: with the poster image concealed, I told the class that after we reviewed the Compositional Strategies, I was going to reveal an image that makes obvious use of one of the strategies in particular. I explained that the first person to yell out the correct one and wave his or her hand would win the sketchbook.

The competition was intense, but Troy J. won by identifying "Geometric Shape to Isolate a Focal Point" because of the window around the woman's eye.

Extension: Analyze and interpret the image. Perhaps the meaning of the image is related to the notion that the eyes are the "windows of the soul."

Freedom from Want--Thanksgiving Hook (High School Art Criticism Mini-Lesson)

Just before the Thanksgiving Holiday, I used these images of "Freedom from Want" by Norman Rockwell as prompts for an art criticism mini-lesson. I simply projected them, provided the following information for note-taking and asked students to work individually or in small groups to answer two questions before we discussed them as a class. I found it to be a simple, quick and effective art criticism "hook," and hope you do too.

Background Information:

Norman Percevel Rockwell (February 3, 1894 – November 8, 1978) was a 20th century American painter and illustrator. His works enjoy a broad popular appeal in the United States, where Rockwell is most famous for the cover illustrations of everyday life scenarios he created for The Saturday Evening Post magazine over more than four decades.

His last painting for the Post was published in 1963, marking the end of a publishing relationship that had included 322 cover paintings. He spent the next 10 years painting for Look magazine, where his work depicted his interests in civil rights, poverty and space exploration.
Many contemporary artists consider his work trite or banal and refer to him as an "illustrator" rather than an "artist" or "painter," as an insult. However, Rockwell referred to himself as an illustrator.

Normal Rockwell created images illustrating The Four Freedoms first published in The Saturday Evening Post. The Office of War Information later issued the series as posters as an incentive for War bond purchasers. Many of these posters are still sold today.

The Four Freedoms are goals famously articulated by United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt, urged by wife Eleanor Roosevelt and friend Jon Run, on January 6, 1941. In an address also known as the Four Freedoms speech, FDR proposed four points as fundamental freedoms humans "everywhere in the world" ought to enjoy:

1. Freedom of speech and expression
2. Freedom of religion
3. Freedom from want
4. Freedom from fear

Source: Wikipedia

Questions:

1) What are all the ways in which Rockwell communicated the concept of "Freedom from Want" in this image?

Make sure students notice details about the room (sparkling appearance, wall paper, artwork, etc.), as well as light quality, the fresh-scrubbed appearance of the family members along with their clothing and their expressions, grand parents presiding, the china/crystal, the crudite, etc. They should also notice that the table isn't laden with food, yet the turkey is enormous.

2) What pictorial strategies did Rockwell use to make us feel like we are a guest who has just walked in to join the feast?

Students should notice that the way the table is cropped makes it appear to extend into our space and that the way the male in the bottom right corner is turned to look makes it seem as though he heard us walk in and has turned to welcome us.