Confucius’s stone slab

Printmaking

Today’s class on printmaking was fun. I think this would be a great exercise to do in the classroom.  Printmaking is such an ancient form, yet such an effective way of created replications of work. When I was doing this exercise I thought of stone slabs that I saw in Xian, China in which the Chinese scholar Confucius transferred his classic texts onto huge, flat stone slabs. After the lines were incised, damp paper was pressed and molded on the surface, so that the paper was held in the incised lines. Ink was applied, and the paper was then carefully removed. The resulting image appeared as white lines on a black background, In this technique lies the very conception of printing which I find interesting, I witnessed a piece that influenced the idea of printmaking.  The techniques that we learned in class were very useful and I believe would be easy to apply in any classroom.

Lesson Plan:

Title – Still Life Printmaking
By – Stephanie Slatner
Primary Subject – Art
Grade Level – 3-12
1st Lesson of Printmaking Lesson
Number of Students: 19Concept/Goal: To learn about still life drawings and a method of printmaking.Activity: Students will use a still life to make a drawing and then transfer to a Styrofoam plate to use as a method of printing.Tools; Special Equipment; Supplies: Styrofoam plates, newsprint, drawing paper, pencils, brayers, printing ink, and trays

Textiles and quilting 

I enjoyed today’s video “Chilean Arpilleras,” I have often seen quilts such as the ones shown on the video and enjoyed the artistic scenes.  Today I was surprised to find out that often these scenes are telling a story of political injustice. To me the scenes were cheerful and full of colour, however in reality they were depicting injustices to the people of Chile.  This reinforced the idea that art is a form of expression and often the artist is portraying a message.  The people of Chile were very cleaver in telling their story through art which brought international attention.

I enjoyed having a chance to do some sewing within our groups.  The purple group decided to depict scenes of Vancouver through the piece we created.  I found it difficult to do the stitching of the cloth, which gave me an appreciation for my mother who used to spend hours making quilts for us while we were growing up.  I enjoyed this activity and would like to do it with a class one day.

Good lesson plan idea for quilting with primary students:

Students make a quilt with 26 squares for each letter of the alphabet. This activity is designed as a family project.

Materials:

The elements and principles of design was an interesting exercise that I enjoyed very much. I liked the hands approach to teaching us about the elements and principals of design.  By creating collages of form, balance, texture, pattern, colour, contrast and line it allowed us to learn about what these elements are, but in a useful interactive way. By creating an assignment like this is allows students to understand definitions which will be remembered much more effectively than just reading them from a text. If I ever have to teach elements in my class I will use this technique.   

A couple of pieces done by group members in class

There are various products that are called clay of one sort or another. The most basic is water-based or potter’s clay. This is what has been used for millennia for making ceramic objects, and it has been the primary material in which sculptors have traditionally worked out their ideas. It is formed by the natural decomposition of rock into microscopic flat plates, which trap water between them, causing its characteristic “plasticity”. It is often deposited by rivers in deep layers, from which it is extracted for use. Some clay is ready to use as dug, that found in other locations may need refining or mixing with other components to be useful.

Clay is the most malleable of materials. It is easily shaped by hand, and much beautiful work has been done without using any tools at all, just fingers. Forms can be built up from coils or rolled-out slabs, or the potter’s wheel can be used to quickly produce a hollow unit for subsequent assembly. A wide range of tools can be used to shape it as well, from wooden sticks or metal shapes to loop-ended tools, “ribs” (rigid or flexible flat shapes), and numerous other implements, such as are commonly found in kitchens.  Today in class we experimented with clay, we

Reflection on Class two   Today’s class was interesting. I enjoyed watching the video on Goldsworthy’s work. It opened my eyes as to how nature can be used as a tool to create art. I loved the way Goldsworthy folded and creased leaves to catch the light, it made a spectacular scene.  I was equally impressed with his ability to get a sense of an area and draw out the character of his environment. I look forward to learning more of his pieces.

 The clay aspect of today’s class was really frustrating for me, the muse was not there for me and I didn’t have much of anything by the end of class.  This was a good lesson for me to be able to understand where some of my students may be coming from when working with clay.  It is a hard medium to work with and I will be aware of this fact while my students are eperimenting with it.

Children’s drawing assignment

Artist: Tananger

Age: Four years old

Assignment: Self Portrait

Observations:

When I first asked Tananger to draw a portrait of himself he tells me flat out no, he’s going to draw something else, I tell him what I am going to use the drawing for and he agrees. He starts out by drawing a rock, I ask him what it is and he tells me it’s the rock he is going to trip over, he thinks this is pretty funny. He then starts to draw himself with a running commentary, “this is my head, and my eyes and my little button nose,” he says. He is very confident while he draws and he is engaging me with his comments. Next he draws very long legs to represent him growing up. He decides to draw his best friend beside him, he has a much bigger nose, but he is also growing up so he has very long legs. He decides to draw a mud puddle after that and a tree with some pinecones on the ground. He says that his friend Max trips over the rock and falls in the mud puddle and he starts to laugh, he is very imaginative and free in his expression.

Assignment 2: How something works.

Observation:

Tananger decides to show me how his scooter works and starts drawing himself on it. He pauses while he is explaining, struggling with drawing his explanation; instead he would like to just show me how it works by demonstrating outside. I tell him that the exercise is to draw it on paper he thinks about it for a while and then he starts to draw his scooter. The scooter has handlebars where his hands go, he draws himself holding onto the handlebars next, he shows me his feet. One foot is on the ground propelling the scooter forward while the other one is on the scooter itself. After Tananger is finished his drawing he is tired and needs a break. He runs of and goes to play.

Artist: Joyalie

Age: 12

Assignment: Self portrait

Observation:

Joyalie concentrates hard on her drawing she does not talk much while she is working, instead she is getting frustrated and often erases the work she has just accomplished, she is frustrated with her work. She changes her portrait a few times. I tell her that it doesn’t have to be perfect; she can draw it however she would like. After I tell her this she decides to draw a stick man representation. She draws the stick man quite quickly and is satisfied with her result.

Assignment: Anything she wishes

Joyalie decides to draw a cat, you can tell she has drawn a cat before and feels confidant doing so. She is not very creative with her drawing, she decides to focus on the detail of the cat, her head is down and she is concentrating intensely on it. She draws her cat in the middle of the page with detailed features; there is nothing around the cat. The cat is very small, but when she is finished with her drawing she is very satisfied with her work.

From this exercise I learned that children’s engagement in art varies depending on the age. I’m glad that I was able to witness children of varying ages because they approached the exercises in very different ways. Tananger was actively engaged in his piece, his eyes lit up when I told him that we were about to do art. However, Joyalie who is older, did not show as much enthusiasm, her joy for drawing was not as evident and she seemed to care more about doing her work well, rather then enjoying the process. Through ridged expectations at school perhaps Joyalie had lost some of her creativity and enthusiasm towards drawing. Tananger on the other hand was enthusiastic about the process, he happily did his portrait without any thoughts of right or wrong, his commentary was interesting and engaging. His artwork seemed to function as a way of telling a story. Although Tananger was free with his expression and showed many symbolic representations in his work, he struggled with proportion. In his self-portrait he drew extremely long legs with a small body and head, he represented how he was growing up. Joyalie on the other hand was developed in her ability to create a cat in proportion; she had tools to be able to create technical drawings. Through watching both Tananger and Joyalie engage with their work I realized that creativity is an attitude, not an aptitude and can be crushed by adults and teachers if we are not careful in how we respond to children’s work.

Entering our art class today, I felt intimidated and a bit nervous about what lay ahead.  I have never been an artist, and feel that I lack artistic ability. As a result, I have always tried to weasel my way out of doing projects that require a lot of artistic dexterity.  Because of this lack of confidence in the arts, I fear teaching it. However, after today’s class I feel much better about the process.  Today I realized that regardless of ones ability, art is an expression and there is no right or wrong. I feel we’ve moved away from this in the regular classroom due to the pressures of always labeling things as good or bad, always feeling the need to give a grade and test the students.  I think this creates a lot of anxiety for the students and it doesn’t allow them the freedom to think outside the box.  I noticed that while we were doing the exercise of drawing lines to music, at first I wondered if I was doing it correctly. It was hard to just let go and allow the music to guide me.  Once I eventually did let go, I really enjoyed this exercise of expression. Similarly, when we gathered items from around the school and made them into art, I realized that anything can be art.  There were no boundaries of right or wrong, every single piece that was created was unique in it’s own way and was praised.  I think this took a competitive edge away from the class. In other academic classes there is a sense of competition in which people want to outdo others.  I felt that in the art class this competitive edge was lessened and people just focused on creating. 

As a teacher I believe that if I can allocate a time for all my students to be geniuses in their expression of art, regardless of what it looks like it will give them the confidence to open up and express themselves.  The arts can be a tool within the education system to restore balance and depth to the education system allowing the students to explore their abilities in a free, non-testable area.

 I really enjoyed working on the collage today, it was an excellent way to create a piece of art without having to be particularly skilled or have an extensive background in it. It was interesting to see how picking one colour really unifies a piece.  I really enjoyed this exercise and would like to incorporate it in my class one day.

Collage created by the purple group.