Fun with junk.

A sign that they're getting it... A student yells, "I found a neck!", while pulling a battery out of a box of junk.

Working Together on Pour Paintings

Clay as a model for drawing.

This clay swan is being built by a 9th grader who is very serious about art...so serious that there have been tears when drawings have been smudged...so serious that there really is nothing else but the details. I spent so much time talking with her about building drawings from the general to the specific, about holding off on the details till the forms are in place, without much success. Then...I gave her some clay. She slowly coaxed the clay into the form she wanted, using pictures as a reference, taking such time and care. Once she was sure everything was secure, strong, and how she wanted it, then she started to draw in the feathers and other details you see above. When she didn't get it quite right she happily smoothed the marks away and started fresh. I was amazed.

Maybe it's just me, but I see this "anxiety" around details growing in teenagers and I attribute it to the computer. They want the work to just appear on the page right away, perfect, the way they see it in their head. And this got me thinking about the size of the tools I ask students to work with and the way in which I ask them to work. Maybe this seems obvious to you. Maybe it should have been obvious to me. But I am now thinking about starting my Intermediate Drawing and Painting class with big clunky paintbrushes instead of the pencils students are more "comfortable" with. I am thinking of the wonderful parallels between working with clay and drawing. Maybe even, gasp, sculpting from observation before, or along with, drawing from observation. Thoughts?

more figure drawing.

my 9th graders continue to blow me away. we did some gesture drawings of each other this morning. they loved posing for each other and coming up with wacky positions. even the kids who have been struggling with drawing seemed comfortable with the scribbling as a way of finding proportion and weight.

we're going to do a project about people that requires them to work more from their imagination in a few weeks so this is the prep for that.

principles of design project, beginning.

one of the biggest weaknesses in art made by teenagers, in my opinion, is composition. they are scatterers. they like to just toss everything and anything into their work. i think this is mostly because they don't understand the possibilities available to them. so i two years ago i developed this project i called the principles of design portfolio. i asked them to use xeroxes to make studies that showed their understanding of things like balance, emphasis, movement, etc. it definitely helped their vocabulary, but the project was too dry for 9th graders.

so this year i decided to mix it up a bit. i asked them to choose two characters from the xeroxes available (they're from a collection i have of old national geographic magazines which means the people are from all different races and economic classes) and to create a "situation" between them...to tell a story. they have 8 small pictures in which to tell the story and each picture should show their understanding of a particular principle of design, like using contrast to emphasize, for example.

they are just going crazy over this project. they love the idea of creating little soap operas between these characters and have done so much planning. in fact, i had to push them away from their sketchbooks and towards the actual collages.

on friday i plan to teach them how to bind the pages together to make a book. more pictures of the finished products soon.

mapping the still life

it is so important to 9th graders to make drawings that are super realistic but they are rarely willing to put in the amount of energy needed into actually observing what's in front of them. so...i try to develop ways to trick them into doing more observing than drawing in the hopes that they will build these habits before it matters too much.

in this exercise i set up a still life and then ask them to create a representation of the set up on paper without actually drawing any of the objects. it should be detailed enough so that someone could gather all the supplies they would need and then re-build it in another location at another time.

i did this for the first time when i was teaching basic drawing at the university of iowa and i can't even remember if it was my idea or if it's one i stole from someone else. the iowa kids came up with all kinds of crazy solutions to the problem. my 9th graders are often less inventive but this year's crew did some interesting things. and they learn what they're supposed to whether or not the work they make is all that visually interesting.

shape collage brainstorming.

my 9th graders are starting the collage project this week. the class is very small (yes, that's the whole class seated around the table with me. sorry brooklyn teachers).

we looked at a powerpoint i made with pictures of work that focused on shapes, including cave paintings, Harriet Powers's quilts, and Matisse's collages. as we looked at the pictures we talked about how people have been using shapes to tell stories about their lives ever since the beginning of time.

after looking at the pictures we gathered around the table and did some thinking and talking about what stories revealed something about our personality. some of the stories were events we remembered and some were stories that we'd heard over and over from family and friends. some of the stories included the time d tried to to make a smoothie and forgot to put the lid on the blender, when i's family moved to japan and he was the only red-head in class, and when s took a class on fashion and all the well-dressed girls picked on her but she got an A. it was a good conversation. we'll see what they make.

focusing on focusing.

on mondays my advanced 2d class draws from observation. for the first half of the term i focused on increasing their understanding of what it takes to build a drawing...working in layers, being flexible, working from the general to the specific. they seemed to get it but they haven't been observing as closely as i wanted them to.

they're the group on "the plan" after all and they tend to get silly when we work from observation. so today i decided i would provide some of the structure and they would provide the rest. they would draw tiny pine cones. i hoped the size would help them to get involved and obsessed...

i also told them they couldn't sit within 10 feet of anyone else and they had to work in silence. i recommended headphones. they got to choose large or tiny paper and the materials they wanted to work with. i advised them to think about their natural tendencies...to work small and detailed or big and sweeping and to choose wisely.

and...they did it. they worked in silence, away from each other. they spent 50 minutes observing intensely. and most of them made the best drawings i've ever seen them make.

they need that internal focus to make accurate drawings. so what is it? is it sitting instead of standing? is it working without and audience? is it the tiny objects combined with the teenage brain?

or was it me?

i sat away from them and worked on my computer while they worked, making one or two quick laps around the room. i rarely allow myself to do this. rather, i circle around like a mother hen while they draw making mental notes of who's having trouble with what and yelling out suggestions to the class. maybe they were just as relieved as i was to have some quiet for once?

this makes me think it could be interesting to have a class like this work on one tiny drawing all term long next year....

the changing still life.

this morning i did one of my favorite drawing projects with my 9th graders. i can't remember anymore which projects i invented and which i didn't...but i started using this exercise to fight the number one battle i have when teaching teenagers to draw...their inability to be flexible. they insist on getting it right on the first try or they give up. they get extremely aggravated when they realize their drawing is out of proportion and something big has to be moved...god forbid. and they do not like eraser marks or any other kind of stray marks on their work. all of this cracks me up as they want adults to move deadlines and leave their stuff all over the place but that's beside the point.

here's what i do...i set up two simple objects on a table and i tell them to make the best drawing they can of what they see using line and value. after about 15 minutes i add an object. they adjust their drawing appropriately, erasing and re-drawing as needed. i continue to add objects to the still life every 3 minutes or so until the table is full and their groans reach a certain level of drama. then...i start taking objects away every 3 minutes or so. this positively drives them over the edge. i usually leave one object on the table but i move it to a different spot. their drawings show the history of the process which i love, love, love...and they hate.

the most important part of the whole activity is the conversation we have afterward about what was frustrating about the process of making the drawing. i talk to them about how the physical activity that happened during this exercise should be happening during every drawing even when i'm not messing with the still life.

this is an exercise that several students have told me (much after the fact) really changed their thinking about what making a drawing is all about. they admitted to hating the activity, and maybe even me a little bit at the time we did it, but were thankful later on.

drawing on each others drawings.

oh boy, did they hate doing this...i set up a fairly complicated still life and asked them to draw it as best they could using charcoal. after about 20 minutes i asked them to rotate 5 spots to their right, to someone else's drawing. they were to correct what they saw in front of them, erase and re-draw as they thought was necessary. some students arrived at a drawing that was better than theirs and some arrived at drawings that needed a lot of work. i had them work on an additional two drawings before returning to their own to see what had become of it.

we had a discussion about what you see when you look at someone else's drawing...how it's easier to see the mistakes and why. we talked about flexibility and how in order to make accurate drawings you need to be willing to adjust, eliminate, add, and look very closely.

students...teaching.

in the second week of art principles i have my students spend most of their time interacting with each other and with the world of art. i find it gives them a chance to get to know each other better while developing language with which to discuss works of art. plus i get to observe how they work together in groups and what i need to add to my curriculum for this particular group of students.

one of the activities i like to do is to have them work in groups to teach the class to re-create a famous painting. they start by discussing and analyzing the painting. then they make plans and lists in their sketchbooks. 

finally, they get up in front of the class and try to tell their classmates verbally what to do. they are not allowed to demonstrate or show the class the picture. usually about a quarter of the way into it they realize how difficult the task is and it gets very funny. they realize how articulate they need to be and how closely they have to observe the painting to be able to get the class to re-create it.
   

it's always funny for the kids to see the results of the crazy yelling, talking, and gesturing. and then we answer one of my very favorite questions to ask teenagers...how would you do it differently knowing what you know now?

talk and draw.

this is not an orginal idea...but one of my favorites, especially for 9th graders. i pair them up and one person gets to look at the still life while the other draws. the person looking at the still life's job is to describe what they see to the drawer, but they are not allowed to use the name of any of the objects. they are also not allowed to point to the paper the drawer is working on or gesture in any way. the goal is for the drawer to make an accurate drawing of the still life.

my students love, love, love to talk so it always cracks me up when they gave so much trouble doing this...and they do. after they finish we have a discussion about what it took to complete the task and what they would do differently if they had to do it again. and year after year they say the same thing. they would have started by calmly giving an overview of the set up so the drawer had a rough idea of what they were doing. then they would have described the shapes in more detail in an organized way, either from top to bottom, or from left to right.

i try to drive home the idea that the level of effort it took to observe, analyze, and describe, is the level of effort they should be putting into every drawing if they want it to be accurate and dynamic.

art principles.

 
this term i'm also teaching art principles. this is a 9th grade general art class. it's a little different than all the other classes i teach because it lasts for two terms. it's also usually a small class...this term i have 10 students in it. so i get to know the students really well and they become a sweet little supportive art community when all goes well.

to start out on the first day i have them do artistic interviews with one another. i give them a series of questions they ask their partner and then their job is to make a portrait of their partner as an artist and to introduce them to the class as an artist. i find this activity really opens them up. we laugh at all the funny stories of how art has shown up in their lives, especially in the form of bad art teachers or siblings who made fun of their skills. 

the portrait you see above is of a girl who got really angry when her elementary school art teacher told her to change the color of the sky in her drawing and who once found great success in an egg drop contest. i think it's a hilarious picture.