Sample Lessons
Line Mural click here to see student samples
Principles: Complex things are made up of a series of simple parts; something as basic as line can be powerful and quite varied; connections between two things or parts are crucial for unity; potentials and meaning can exponentiate with group effort; there are many media artists can use and each has its own properties.
Procedure: Each student creates a segment consisting of 6 panels: 3 lines interweave across 5 panels in multiple media; the 6th panel is used to connect student segments together, creating a class mural. Excellent for display in school library, hallway or auditorium.
Art Chess
Principles: The possibilities of how a given media can be manipulated to create art is dependent only on the limitations the laws of physics holds it to; artists make mental and emotional associations using visual symbolism; figuring out how to work with what you cannot control is a useful skill that stimulates creativity (and therefore problem-solving) in surprising ways.
Procedure: In teams, students create a piece of art on an 18"x 24" piece of paper. Teams swap art, significantly transforming the other team's work physically; the technique used/resulting visual result must be informed by a mental or emotional association with the original piece. Pieces are returned to original teams who must now make a new piece of art out of their transformed original. Repeat this sequence in as many rounds as there are teams. Between each round, class critiques work, deciding on which team did the best work. At the end of the game, a winning team is decided.
Self-portrait as Super Hero/Adventurer & Magic Item Design
Principles: Honest self-assessment helps you be clear about your capabilities, potentials, limitations and motivations; taking stock of the resources available to you will reveal the tools you have to navigate the world around you; with knowledge of self and of resources, you are in an advantageous place to make decisions about your life and communicate them to others; wielding power is an ethical issue.
Procedure: Students brainstorm their strengths, weaknesses, interests and resources. Students then write up a short bio, determining where their traits and resources derive from. Students recreate themselves as a super-hero/adventurer and make a self-portrait as that hero/adventurer. Students brainstorm issues they see as problematic in their world and design a magic item that helps resolve the problem in their hero/adventurer persona. Students sculpt the item to scale (as is reasonable) and create a 2-D rendering of the effect of the item/the item in use.
If You Had the Advertising Budget of Coca-Cola click here to see student samples
Principles: Consumerism is a powerful force in our lives; money fuels what resources are used for what ends; lots of people get paid a lot of money to spend even more money to send messages to other people through imagery; people respond to images and their corresponding messages that they see all the time.
Procedure: Class goes over annual advertising budget and revenues of Coca Cola, as well as the 200 countries around the world where it is sold. Students brainstorm the situations they personally have seen the Coke logo, then determine the message this ever-present image is conveying. Students brainstorm the benefits of this product. Students then brainstorm what message each would want to convey to others if they had the budget, presence, and resulting human action Coke has. Students design a logo or trademark to symbolize their message. Class critique and vote determines a 'winning' design that gets printed onto stickers or t-shirts or patches students can take home/give out/otherwise disperse into the community.
Personalized American Flag click here to see student samples
Principles: Symbols can be at once personal and universal; identity is at once singular and group-based; a symbol that seems universal does not wholly represent the individuals associated with it; artists re-create symbols to make statements about individuals or subgroups associated with those symbols.
Procedure: Students brainstorm what the American flag symbolizes at large, then determine what it means to them. They each think about the place 'American' has in their overall identity, then redesign the American flag in the image of their multifaceted identity, using symbols from the cultures (ethnic, neighborhood, school, hobby groups, etc.) they identify with.
Tile & Pattern Design: Class Mural & Individual Pattern click here to see student samples
Principles: Complex things are made up of a series of simple parts; something as basic as line can be powerful and quite varied; connections between two things or parts are crucial for unity; potentials can exponentiate with group effort; modern technology enables an astounding wealth of imagery we available to us on a daily basis; we can create dynamic new images by cropping and building from the most unlikely sources (like a Clorox ad or the text of a headline) without having to be able to draw realistically
Procedure: Class discussion on how technology deeply affects art and life. Students use a 6"x 6" square stencil to crop images, looking through books, magazines, posters, CD covers, etc. hunting for interesting shapes and negative space. Each designs a tile from their hunt, either copying it by hand or digitally, to create 4 tiles: 2 original and 2 mirror of the original. They then arrange the tiles in various ways, deciding on a final pattern. Class is introduced to color theory. Students make one copy of their tile and render it in the hue of their choice, including that hue's tint, shade, analogous colors, and complimentary color. Students then must create a new tile that links their tile with their neighbor's, solving a two-part puzzle of line/pattern transition as well as color relationship transition. Tiles are joined into a flowing unified class mural. Students then return to their 4-tile pattern and add color as they choose, by hand or digitally.
'-ness' Sculptures
Principles: artists need to be able to determine the individual characteristics of a given person/place/thing in order to render it or pull something from it; each thing has its own characteristics which make it recognizable as that thing/classifiable as something other than anything else; artists can use those characteristics to create metaphor and associations in new imagery; artists must be resourceful, using what they have at hand for supplies - in order to do that, they must be able to make connections between diverse objects so they can know how to transform them into what they need to make a visual statement; complex things are made up of a series of simple parts.
Procedure: Students work in small groups. Each group is given a culturally familiar subject (ex: Darth Vader or the Golden Gate Bridge) and must transform a shoe box into a non-representational portrait of that subject. They can refold the box, paint it, cut into it, place things in it...as long as the visuals reflect the separate characteristics that make up the whole. They can use patterns, motifs, texture, color, shape, anything but an actual image of what the subject actually looks like. They are capturing the essence of the subject, thereby defining it (ex: Darth Vaderness). These can be displayed on campus, where the student body can guess what they are portraits of.
Color Hunt & Assemblage
Principles: Complex things are made up of a series of simple parts; something as basic as color can be powerful and quite varied; potentials and meaning can exponentiate with group effort; we live in a world of color
Procedure: Each student is given a color swatch, and must bring in to class 2 objects that match that color: one natural and one manufactured. Students assemble objects into the color wheel and various aspects of color theory.
Following are lesson summaries. Each of these lessons can be adapted in various ways for classes or individuals with varying skill levels. Some are short, some long; some can be nestled within a unit, others lengthened into a unit. Techniques vary. Each lesson meets multiple state and national standards for Art.