Illustrations Alive

What could be better than designing a wild accessory?  Wearing it!  Seventh grade students brainstormed what object they would like to create as “wearable art”, and then we photographed the artist posing with their object.

Milk Cartons- Simple and Strong

In the beginning of the school year, upper school students work on many life drawing assignments to hone their perception skills and train their eyes.  I want them to focus on angles, relationships, proportion, scale, and accuracy.  Milk cartons proved to be a wonderful object because of their geometric structures and playful forms.  With proper lighting, the milk cartons became a powerful subject matter for my students.

Stop Motion Drawings

Sixth grade students worked in small groups to collaborate on ideas and imagery for stop motion drawings.  Students worked on the concrete floor and drew with chalk pastel while one student was the designated photographer.  Here are there results- three small group projects and a final full group drawing at the end.

 

 

 

 

 

6th Grade Stop Motion

Critique with students- ideas #1 and #2

I like to add variety to the standard “critique” with my students. Since it can feel intimidating to verbally give constructive criticism, I like use various methods that involve post-it notes. This makes critique a color-coded exercise, immediately apparent to the viewer, and lends itself to accessible entry points.

Idea #1

Hang the art to be critiqued on the wall. Give students two different colors of post-it notes. One should be a bright red or pink and the other can be yellow or plain. With the bright post-it, have them place it on the edge of the artwork that they feel has the strongest overall composition. Immediately, you will be able to see the star artworks as they will collect the most post-it notes. Discuss why these artworks stand out from the rest.

With the other color post-it, have students answer either: something they like or find intriguing about that artwork or write what kind of mood that artwork exudes and stick it on that artwork. Talk about what students wrote and why as a group.

Idea #2

Hang the art to be critiqued on the wall. Choose four different colors of “post-it” notes and give one to each student (you can cut them in half because students do not need a full square). Tell students what each color represents, and have them choose one artwork on the wall to which they want to respond. All four colors correspond to the same artwork so that a full set of colors is attached in the end. Students respond to the following prompts using their chosen artwork:

White= Describe what you see

Yellow= Analyze how the elements of art are working together

Green=Interpret the artist’s ideas, what’s happening in the artwork?

Purple= What do I think about this artwork?

When students are finished, have them attach the post-it notes to the bottom edge of the artwork. Then students can take turns reading them aloud or silently and gather anonymous written feedback from their peers.

Life Sandwiches

What is a sandwich?  In my definition, it is an edible object containing layered ingredients usually between some type of bread.  However, a sandwich can also be a metaphor.  What else can a sandwich represent?  What parts of our lives are “sandwiched” together?  This assignment required upper school students to assess the parts of their life that matter to them and assemble them into some kind of meaningful sandwich.  They illustrated their ideas with either drawing materials or acrylic paints.  Notice the variety of what a sandwich can truly become.

Beautiful Elements

When 6th grade students begin their artistic journey with me, it is often their first middle school art class.  I like to start by reviewing the building blocks of art in order to develop their critical understanding of the objective parts.  The elements of art are the “foundation” of any artwork- line, shape, color, texture, space, and value.  This assignment was created over a period of four class periods, and each day students focused on a different trait or two (drawing only lines, adding color with paint or oil pastel, cutting shapes from paper) until they synthesized all the elements into a coherent artwork on the last day.

Transformation

Upper school recently completed an assignment about transformation. Not only did they physically alter media to “transform it”, but also transformed the content within the images to create unusual situations.  Here are some of their solutions and the magazine collages they manipulated along the way.  Working with moveable objects/cut-out imagery, proved to be an important step for students in helping them conceptualize compositions and clearly communicate a message regarding Transformation.

EdD in Teaching and Learning Program

In four years, I plan on being Dr. Berk!  I was accepted into the EdD program in Teaching and Learning at UCSD.  Classes begin this summer and will complement the work I do in the classroom. My thesis project this year will be an action research project to be implemented during my current teaching practice.  I have many topics of interest, but first, I am learning the research and writing tools to help me get started.  Wish me luck.

Digital Storytelling- the untold story

I’m currently taking a class for my EdD degree titled “New Technologies for Learning”, and one of our assignments is to collaborate in small teams and change or edit an existing Wikipedia article that relates to education and technology.  My team chose “Digital Storytelling”, and we have been adding new research, citations, and headers to improve the existing article (I created the components section).  In addition, we have to give a final presentation on how we decided what to do on and what changes were made.  As a creative way to present our summary, we made our own digital story about  digital stories.  Hence, our new YouTube video on digital stories.  Enjoy!

The Daring Chair Drawing

Drawers, change your perspective!  It’s comfortable and familiar to begin drawing an object by staring at it straight on.  Most students adopt this approach, or perhaps an aerial view by looking down on it from above.  But the hideous part about drawing, is that we are constantly competing with our brain- that mind’s eye that tells us a line is really shaped shorter or rounder then it actually appears.  Students learning to draw forget to stop looking at what they are drawing on paper and instead spend more time studying the object.

Hence, the suspended chair drawing assignment- dare to draw the hanging chair.  Not only was it a constant attention grabber as students entered the room, (“Why is there a chair hanging from the ceiling?”, “Can I sit in the hanging chair?”), it also forced them to expand their accepted view of a chair. It was my sixth grade classes that surprised me most in this assignment with their bold portrayals and outstanding compositions.

I  made my students start their drawings in crayon, leaving them unable to erase errant marks.  After creating rough contour drawings, they painted the negative space with black paint and made a solid underpainting of the chair shape.  Finally, using oil pastels, students colored their chair paintings, paying attention to the fact that brighter areas feel close while faded colors recede into the distance.

 

Greatest Remote Controls Ever

My 6th grade students were tasked with creating the “World’s Greatest Remote Control”, or more specifically, one that meets the needs and desires of their lives.  We discussed good design (form versus function) and examples of well and poorly designed objects.  However, I added one caveat which was that they had to include a button that would do something to make the world a better place.  Additionally, user’s manuals helped explain the purpose and intent of each button.  While the final remote controls were  inventive and clever, I relished  hearing what they chose for their “world improvement buttons.” These turned out to be the gems of the assignment.  Examples of what their “world improvement buttons” would accomplish are as follows:

- No cruelty to animals

- World Peace (but only for an hour because it can’t last forever- according to the student)

- Clean up all trash

- Make people fly so there would be no more pollution from driving

- Put a $100 bill in everyone’s shoe

 

Photo Finish

 

 

(the image on the Left is the finished painting, on the right is the photo being outlined)

 

For students, it can be a daunting task to take an image they are attached to and realistically re-create it into an artwork.  I wanted to take the guess work out of the process and make them immediate art superstars.  Old masters used the camera obscura to project their subject matter accurately and modern artists use giant LCD projectors, so I thought, “What the heck? Why not just use the original photograph as the actual starting point?”

What I mean is that we printed the students’ photographs on a color printer size 9″ x 12″ and mounted them onto wood panels the same size.  After outlining the main shapes and contours with thin sharpie markers, students mixed acrylic paints and filled the shapes with color to turn the photos into paintings. While it seemed straightforward, it still proved tricky to match the mind’s eye and maintain the realism.  The hardest part were faces and facial features because it only takes one weird mark to make the whole thing look “off”.  In the end, I think most students would say this is the artwork they are most proud of completing this year.  Instant success? I think so.

Zentangle- the new doodle craze

Don’t know where I’ve been, but I just discovered this craze called “Zentangle” (visit this blog for some more info Zentangle). I like the idea of getting lost in the act of doodling.  It seems a little prescriptive, in fact, there are web pages about how to make the library of various marks which all have assigned names.  However, for the naive and amateur sketcher, I can see how it may be helpful to have an index of doodles from which to select and combine.  I might try it with my students too.

 

(June 10, 2011) As a follow-up note, I assigned some zentangle doodling as a side project for students to work on in between other projects.  Here are some results:

Where did the creative juices go?

I’m doing a project with my sixth graders where I’m asking them to turn an ordinary image (albeit an antique object) into something, anything- as long as it’s not too obvious.  I want them to use their imagination to transform one thing into something else.  Let me say this, I did NOT think it would be a difficult assignment, but it turns out it is.  I’m getting so many: “I don’t know what to do”, “I don’t have any ideas”, “Do I have to come up with more than one idea?” comments.  I’m stunned.  What happened to imagination?  Why can’t these students delight in the challenge of reinvention?  Posted above, are the original images from which they may choose. I printed each object fairly large in the middle of a 12″ by 18″ piece of drawing paper.  Students were given small “thumbnail” size photographs upon which to test their sketches first, as in brainstorming.

As a follow-up one month later, I have to say, they did manage to find their creative juices– thankfully!  Here are the final solutions the students created:

Words of Reflection

Starting the new year with a new art assignment, I asked my upper school students to choose a “word of reflection.”  Inspired by the Ed Rusha gunpowder drawings, students wrote their words in ribbon to transform them into three-dimensional objects.  We used lamps to strengthen cast shadows and practiced creating them in charcoal before using oil paint.  The idea was to not only reflect on the word, but the word as an image.  How can text transform in meaning through visual expression?

Freedom of Expression- MLK Day

“Freedom of Speech- Freedom of Expression” Parker Public Art Wall for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, 2011

The word speech in the First Amendment has been extended to a generous sense of “expression” — verbal, non-verbal, visual, and symbolic. The artistic work supported by the National Endowment for the Arts includes a variety of types of expression enjoying this broad protection.  Various exceptions to free speech have been recognized in American law, including obscenity, defamation, breach of the peace, incitement to crime, “fighting words,” and sedition.

Graffiti (“tagging”) is the name for images or lettering scratched, scrawled, painted or marked in any manner on property. Graffiti is any type of public markings that may appear in the forms of simple written words to elaborate wall paintings. Graffiti has existed since ancient times, with examples dating back to Ancient Greece and the Roman Empire.

Instructions for Students:

Martin Luther King Jr. was an icon of civil rights.  Exercise your freedom of expression by “tagging” the Parker Public Art wall.

  • What ideas do you wish to express in a verbal or symbolic form?
  • What message do you want to leave behind?

Add your mark to the wall.  Mix any paint color and choose a location to freehand paint, or create a paper stencil. Remember that any student can paint over or change what you have done.  The idea of public art is that it grows and belongs to the common population as a mark of all humanity.

Images from the final mural: