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.