Sarabeth's Script

I finally started an Etsy store.  Check it out here

I was inspired last month to launch a new website all about inspiration.  I figured that since I am inspired by so many things, I should keep track of them and share them with other people too.  I am calling the website:

Inspired by _____.

Find the website here. (www.inspiredbyblank.com)

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.

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!

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.

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

(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.

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:

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:

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?