Giving (Christmas Lesson) Eighth, Ninth, and Tenth visit

Giving

Standard

Standard 1

Objective 2B: Use new art materials and newly learned techniques and processes to celebrate important days and historical events.

Goals

Students will have the opportunity to celebrate Christmas and learn about the feeling that comes from giving through the making and gifting of a Christmas tree ornament. 

Vocabulary                                                          

Ceramics

Hand-building

Slab

Coil

Slip

Score

Artists

Brett Freund

Eszter Imre

Guliz Korkmaz Tirkes

Bela Silva

Kate Macdowell

Eugene Hon

Edward Morgan 

Leading Questions

What is your favorite Christmas tradition? What is Christmas about? Why do we give? How does it make us feel? What if we give to someone we don’t like very much, how do we feel? How do we pick our gifts we give?

Lesson

                First off I want to talk about Christmas (see leading question ideas). I especially want to highlight giving.  How it makes us feel to give to those we love and even how it feels to give to those we don’t like very much, because giving is exactly what we are going to do. But first we have to make what we are going to give and that is a Christmas ornament. These ornaments will be 3-dimensional and should be unique to the person making it. In other words I want them to think outside the box and not make round or flat ornaments, or ornaments that entirely have to do with Christmas. Two examples about what they could be about instead are about a favorite memory the student had with the person they are giving the ornament to, or something they love about that person. They should also remember to create a space for the ribbon to weave through so the ornaments can be hung on a tree.

                I will show them some examples of what is possible with clay and the art of ceramics (see list of artists) to get some ideas going of what they can do for their ornaments. Then give them a demo on clay techniques, namely how to; make a coil and a slab, smooth the clay, connect pieces together with slip, and draw and imprint designs into the clay. I will also stress that it is very important for the clay not to dry out if they do not finish the piece today. If it dries it is stuck the way it was left. It is also important for them to know that if their piece is more than an inch thick they need to hollow it out, otherwise it will not fire correctly.

                Then I will let them go to create. I don’t want the instruction to take very long because I want them to have a lot of time to experiment and create.

                When they have finished and their pieces are dry and have been fired, students will be able to glaze their ornament!

Assessment

                After they make and give their ornament I want them to tell Mr. Jenkins, either verbally or in written form, how it made them feel to give and how they think the other person felt receiving the ornament. 

Sorry about the lack of pictures for these visits, I had clay on my hands the majority of the time and was unable to take any.

Surrealism: Sixth and Seventh Visit

Dreams

Standards

Standard 2, Objective 1A

Determine how artists create a dominance in their work; e.g., size, repetition, and contrast.

Standard 3, Objective 1b

Invent possible stories that may explain what is going on in these same works of art.

Objective

-Students will interpret possible stories from famous surrealist art. 

-Students will create a surrealist piece that is interesting to them, based on their dreams using the idea

 of repetition in their work. 

Artists

1.       Salvador Dali

2.       Vladimir Kush

3.       Max Ernst

4.       Giorgio de Chirco

Vocabulary

1.       Surrealism

2.       Subconscious/Unconscious

3.       Repetition

Leading Questions

1.       What are dreams? Do they only happen while we sleep? Can they also be things we wish would happen?

2.       Why do we dream?

3.       What sorts of things do we dream about?

4.       Do you ever have nightmares? Are these different from dreams?

5.       Do our dreams always make sense?

6.       Do we always remember our dreams?

Outline

           As a class, we will first discuss dreams and the many possibilities of dreams, whether experienced while sleeping or as waking hopes the students may have. Then the other leading questions will be addressed allowing students to talk about their personal experiences and thoughts on dreams. We will then talk about Surrealist artists (see list of artists) and how it relates to dreams. Students will be encouraged to notice repetition within these artists’ works as well as interpret a possible story about the paintings. This will be done in a full class conversation. To help get the students thinking more about dreams and repetition, we will watch a video about a dream that Pooh has about Heffalumps and Woozles.

Next in groups of five, each student will be given a piece of paper that they will put their name on. Then they will have five minutes to draw one thing, as big or small as they wish, they have dreamt about (either something they hope for or remember from a dream or nightmare). This will be done using graphite.

After the five minutes, they will pass their paper to the right (the student at the end will of course pass their paper to the student at the beginning of the row) and they will have five minutes to repeat the same kind of process. Only this time, and the three times after, the student must also incorporate their thing with/into the ones that are already on the paper. For example, if the first student drew an elephant with a tuba for a head and the next student draws a boat with wheels, then the tuba elephant could be drawn eating the boat. This will help incorporate the idea of having a story or a meaning behind an artwork. To accomplish this, the students will be allowed to add to the previous drawings, but cannot erase any part that was already on the paper. Each time a student adds to a new paper, the thing they choose to draw must be different than the one they drew on the previous paper.
When everyone has drawn on all five pieces of paper, they will pass the paper back to the original student, who will complete the drawing. At this point I will give more instruction as to what is required in the finished piece. Repetition should be incorporated in this stage.

The original student can add whatever they like (continuing to use dreams as inspiration and incorporating the additions to previously drawn things) to make the piece their own. They may interpret the images previously drawn in any way they choose, even adding to them if they wish, but again they are not allowed to erase anything that is already drawn on the page. They are then free to add shading using crayons. They will be encouraged to practice layering different colors to achieve the lights and darks they desire when referencing a light source of their choosing. This light source can be a sun that was in their drawing perspective or an imaginary source outside of their paper.

Assessment

Have the students show, by number of fingers, how many of the required things they incorporated into their art piece. Repetition, story, and lights and darks using a light source.

Nature: Fourth and Fifth Visit

Nature

Standards

Standard 1

Objective 1E: Create the appearance of depth by drawing distant objects smaller with less detail  
                        than objects in the foreground. 
Objective 1F: Establish more natural size relationships among objects in drawings.  
Objective 3C: Clean and put back to order art making areas after projects. 
Objective 2D: Create a work of art that uses all of the space on the paper.

Outcomes

-Students will realistically draw a landscape from life that incorporates depth and uses the full sheet 

  of paper.

-Students will reflect on their relationship with nature and use watercolor, on their landscape 

 drawings, to represent it whether negative or positive.

-Students will correctly learn how to handle watercolor supplies as well as how to properly clean up.

Vocabulary

1    -Perspective

2     -Foreground

3     -Middle ground

4     -Background

5     -Realistic/Realism

6     -Landscape

7     -Atmospheric perspective

8     -Contour

Artists

Landscape Artists

            Thomas Moran

            James McNeill Whistler

            Winslow Homer

Watercolor Artists

            Maja Wrońska

            Jeanne Larson

            Evelyn Dunphy

Leading Questions

1      -What is nature?

2      -Do we enjoy nature?

3      -Is it important to us? Why or why not?

4      -What does nature do for us?

5      -What is your personal relationship to nature?

6      -Can we survive without nature?

Outline

First we will discuss nature as a class. The leading questions will be addressed and students will be thinking about how they personally feel about nature throughout the project. Then we will discuss landscapes. What are landscapes? Do they include buildings or manmade objects? Is it only nature things? Landscape artists will be shown, see list of artists. While viewing these images students will be introduced to the terms of foreground, background, and middle ground. We will also go over atmospheric perspective and perspective, such as when you are looking from different angles at the same object or when you are down low by the grass looking up at the mountains vs if you are standing on top of the mountain. We will also discuss how we think the artist feels about nature through their color choices, how they painted it (whether sporadic or inside the lines, misty or crisp, etc.) We will discuss how to draw realistically. That you have to draw what you see not what you know, meaning that a majority of the time they will be attentive to the landscape and not focused on their drawing. To correctly draw realistically they must follow each line in the landscape with their eyes as their pencil moves on the paper.

            Once we have discussed landscape students will go outside to realistically draw their own contour landscapes. They will choose their own perspective and must fill their entire paper and include a background, middle ground, and foreground. They will do this using graphite. While they are drawing I want them to continue thinking about how they feel about nature, and about their relationship with nature.

            When they are finished we will all come back inside and talk about watercolor, the techniques (flat wash, dry brush, blotting, layering, etc), artists (again- see list of artists), and how to properly handle materials (don’t leave brush in water, get water off brush by scraping on side of cup or on paper towel, don’t touch the bristles, etc), and clean up (empty cups, clean brushes by swishing in water and scraping and wiping, wiping down watercolor container, etc).

Finally students will apply watercolor to their landscape drawings according to how they feel about nature. For this part of the project they are not required to stay in the lines, use realistic colors, or even fill the entire page with color. However they feel about nature should be reflected in how they use the watercolor. They should be somewhat used to this idea because they have practiced expressing emotion through color, line, and composition with oil pastels and collage. Once their watercolors are dry, and if we have time, I would also like them to use pen and ink to define the lines of their landscape. But this can be their decision if they want to or not depending on if it works with their idea.

Assessment

            While the students are drawing I will be walking around helping them draw realistically, giving them pointers and they will constantly be checking if their drawing matches the landscape and perspective they have chosen. While handling supplies students will be helping each other use them properly and help each other clean up correctly. When completely finished, students will turn to the person beside them and explain how they feel about nature, whether positive or negative, and explain how their art piece displays this feeling through the colors, application of paint, strokes, composition of color, etc.