Not-so-fun Fundamentals of Art

          It's funny that when we think of school art assignments, most of us have a general idea of what that entails. In classes such as "Intro to Art" we are taught the fundamental elements of art: color, line, value, contrast, etc. The teacher then has us do blind contour drawings, and sketching out basic shapes and its shadows. We are then tested on our knowledge of art vocabulary such as the differences between tertiary and primary colors, or saturation and hue.

          Here is an excellent video on how to do blind contour drawings. I completely agree with the notion that students should learn the basics before moving into more complex tasks. However, this is a tutorial that is done in less than 3 minutes, whereas in a classroom, this sort of lesson may take up to 30 minutes.

          In my personal opinion, I feel that although these assignments are meant to prep us for future art projects, they are rather lackluster, boring, and repetitive. I learnt all this in high school just to be re-taught the same exact lessons again in a college art course. These mundane art tasks we are given feels almost insulting—actually I am probably just jaded because I am an art student who already has knowledge of the basic concepts. Maybe not insulting, but a little redundant. I remember seeing a rubric of a well-planned out semester, with every detail perfectly placed as to what we'll be doing on what day. Although I did enjoy this class, I observed that most of my peers did not take many of the assignments seriously. I would labor for hours over one homework assignment just to watch the person next to me scribble theirs down last minute.

          It made me think-- maybe had we all been given assignments we were interested in, people would work harder in class. Perhaps if the mold was broken and we were allowed to explore things within our interest, we would be more motivated to produce better artwork as a whole. I think the idea of coming up with new and innovative ways to teach students is a brilliant idea, and would love to learn how to teach with those methods in the future. I think that creativity is a powerful talent to acquire, because it is one thing to replicate, but another to create something uniquely your own. A huge problem in the art community lies in that students go into college wanting to be artists, yet they don't know what they want to do with their career. Should they paint? Maybe sculpt? Become an animator? Perhaps dabble in architecture? In my opinion, it's these concepts that prepare us for the real world that should have more attention. Instead of teaching kids every cookie-cutter art lesson in the book, it might not be a bad idea to just let them dive head first into a project. If you think about it, you could learn everything you can about lines and colors. However, that knowledge doesn’t help you when you’re learning to keep a steady hand in ceramics. I think that art education will be greatly improved with less time spent concept learning, and more time spent on various hands-on projects.

Art in the "Real World"

Do most art education programs within elementary, middle school, and high school classes teach students about the uses of art in the world? In most cases, or at least in my own personal experience, art teachers are so focused on artistic skills and creativity, or the art project, which is of course a vital part of art education, but they forget to teach students how they can apply these skills in the everyday world.

                In most classrooms, not just art, but within English, math, and science the teachers are so focused on the required curriculum, “the projects” behind the lessons, that they often forget to express to students why this information is important, how can this vital information be applied outside of school? Learning how to apply this knowledge becomes increasingly important within high school. Students begin to think about career choices, especially when they enter into junior year and their college applications begin.  For many students, choosing a career path is one of the most difficult decisions they will ever make, that choice determines the rest of their lives. A student might love math or English, but due to a lack of information that student may be unable to see what kind of possibilities lie within that subject.

                Art, being an elective within schools, should be a subject where teachers express the fact that the skills being taught can be translated over and used within various career choices. For instance creativity is a useful trait to have within many professions. Many careers involve an artistic background; architecture, graphic design, multimedia artists and animators, interior design, curators, and museum technicians. However, lots of students who are skilled in the arts do not take their skills seriously, feeling that there are no serious career options within that subject.  

                Many students do not see art as a career choice, because few teachers express the possibilities behind art. I know this because I always loved art, but never saw it as a potential career option because within my school it was merely seen as an elective. Going into college I felt as though choosing a path within the arts would be an ignorant decision, due to the fact that I did not know of any suitable career choices within that field. I felt as though all livelihoods within the arts would leave me out of a job and out of money. Most people view art as a hobby, not as an occupation. I wish that my art teacher would have expressed to me the possibilities that exist within the arts.   

                Luckily when I entered college my eyes opened up to the world of the arts, and I was able to gain enough courage to follow my heart and apply for the school of arts and architecture, within Penn State. I now want to major in art education in order to show my students that art is not simply an elective; it also has the potential of being a legitimate career path.  

This video, Exploring Careers in Art, may be a little cheesy, but it is incredibly informational on all the career options for students considering a career in art (Fortune, 2009).

References:

 

Fortune, T. (2009). Exploring Careers in Art. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iw5RKV7TfBE

 

 

 

 

 



Projects are where it's at!

                                        We might learn a few things if we let go of the past, as the teachers and children demonstrate at Creative Arts Charter School. Although this video is not focused on the art classroom, it still shows the advantages of project-based education. Allowing students to engage in student-led project-based education opens a world of opportunities for student creativity and growth. This video gives a good summary of how students are growing in their individual learning and creativity through lessons based on "real world" investigations. 

I believe that this is easily relatable in art class. Yes, I do believe that going back to the fundamentals in art learning are important. Being aware of vocabulary terms and theories are great, but I believe that students need to practice and relate these terms to areas that they are familiar with in their lives. For example, a teacher could focus a lesson around the period of Cubism. Instead of making students paint their own versions of cubist paintings based off of examples of Picasso's work shown in class, students could paint a picture of a famous landmark in their town in the cubist style (from many different points of view, incorporating shapes, etc.). I believe that forgetting about the past of art education is wrongful. As humans, we like knowing about our past and where we came from. I think that the same idea is applied to art education. 

I remember my first high school art class. It was an intro course that focused entirely on the basics. I remember being bored because I wanted to get into things that were more intense! I wanted to feel like an artist. I would come to class knowing exactly what I would be doing in the next 50 minutes, be working with the same materials and the same still life for days. I know that my art teacher always had really good intentions, however. I understood that he wanted students to grasp basic skills, vocabulary, and methods. One thing that did bother me, however, was that the projects were the same from year to year. In personal views, art teachers should be very open to new projects and new ideas for learning. I think every art student has a project somewhere of a charcoal still life where we focused drawing where the light hits the objects. On critique days, isn't it thrilling when no one's art looks the same?

As the Creative Arts Charter School video showed, students and teachers utilize the real world in projects. Students shouldn't be asked to recreate what has already been created. They should be encouraged to think outside of the box and I believe that the art room is where this idea should be applied. Think of artists in decades past such as Salvador Dali, Pablo Picasso, or Claude Monet. These artists worked from fundamental methods and theories and applied their knowledge in response to the real world. Most of their art was created in direct response to ideas, beliefs, emotions, and experiences of their times. 

It might be time to let go of cookie-cutter art projects of the past and embrace contemporary art movements of the future. I believe in allowing students to make meaning in their projects from real world experiences. I always felt prouder of my work when I was able to make meaning in my art projects. 

Magic in Education?

The article discussed the typical way in which an art class is structured and in my experience this structure seems to hold true. Elementary art teachers seem to struggle with controlling the classroom, keeping kids interested, following the curriculum and having the students produce good quality art work. As a result of this list the approach and general structure of lesions and the lesson topics themselves seem to be the same. This may produce nice neat and well structured art works but it causes the work to look similar from student to student and classroom to classroom. In my observation hours I have seen elementary teachers fall victim to this despite being some of the best teachers who are the most connected to their students.

I'm not sure if I follow the analogy of magic that is carried throughout the entire article but I do follow the idea that even though it appears that teachers are teaching in a way that allows for creativity it is all an illusion. This was my experience throughout elementary school; the class was given a lesion and allowed to create their own version however by following along with the teacher’s instructions all the art ended up looking the same. The older I got however, my classes did seem to become more student centered and I was able to pursue and expand upon my artistic interests in relation to the overall lesson topic or material.

This article has inspired a laundry list of ideas that I would love to implement in my future classroom. It seems to me that a successful classroom falls somewhere in the balance of letting the student drive and inspire themselves and each other and giving them the tool and knowledge to be able to do so. I do worry however that in allowing students to work in different mediums on different projects at the same time will result in me as a teacher not being able to budget the time each student needs during any given class period.

I think this video from a student’s perspective really brings up a lot of good points and reflects what is being taught in this article. A student centered classroom where students are asked to engage in mastery learning rather than memorization and replication seems to be the future of progressive education in our schools. This is applicable to schools in general and should not be limited to just art classrooms.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K96c-TGnSf4&list=PL0134792CEB4EF46D

Dialogue Between Imagination and Formal Education

After ages of producing replicas of famous artwork in class, we are now in the epoch of student-produced curricula. Are students—young and uninhibited—really more qualified to make decisions about their own educations than their teachers? The burning question is beginning to engulf classrooms across the country, and I can’t help but be a critic.

In the past, classrooms were dictated around the idea that the teacher was right and the children were minds to be molded through the intellect of their professor. In a much more progressive age, the student body is gaining more power as far as their education in art. While creativity is of more value than anything else in the art classroom, without traditional education first, It’s difficult for children to understand the processes of how to use certain materials, how to compare styles of different artists, even how to critique each other which is critical in art education. Without constructive criticism, how are students motivated to improve, to experiment, to search for innovation?

I believe that letting students run free within the confines of instructions for a project is the best way for them to learn without walking all over their teacher. Children have an inherent love of the brainchildren of their own imaginations. That much will be consistent with class after class of kids. Their understanding of art principles, however, will never be able to dialogue with this sense of imagination unless they begin learning it at a young age.

Throughout school, the curricula always forced you to take prerequisite art classes, which were often dry and instructive, only so you could reach the dynamic higher-level courses. In these courses, there was little instruction and students were set free to create essentially anything they wanted while following the broad guidelines of assignments. I dreaded the prerequisites at the time I was in them, but in retrospect, they benefited me in ways I can’t even explain, and provided me with skills I constantly use as an art student.  You can bend the rules once you learn them—pushing boundaries is the basis for successful works of art—but you can’t utilize them if you have no idea they exist. 

http://www.pinterest.com/pin/189291990560798446/

Kids take the reigns

To many present teachers, the idea of letting children take the reigns of the class controlling every project or lesson for the year may sound a bit daunting and scary! To be honest, I would probably fall under the same fear. How could I let my class dictate the learning that's going on? How could I sit back and trust the class to make adequate progress and to grasp the main concepts that we as teacher's have responsibility covering? The thought of not meeting specific standards imposed by local, state, and national models is kind of scary!

There has to be a median here. The author of this article, Nan E. Hathaway, did not intend for art teachers to decide to sit back, drink coffee and take naps. No! Hathaway, who is a middle school art teacher in Vermont, was describing a median where students take the lead and teachers facilitate learning. She believes that student-directed learning is the key to the art classroom. The art room has to turn into a studio where students are considered artists with authentic purpose. The article says, "students must first 'be given the opportunity to think like artists,'" (Hathaway, p. 4). Students take the reigns and teachers are there every step of the way, supporting students in their decision making processes. How can students learn the values of higher order thinking, when a teacher is constantly holding their hand? I think teachers who are able to

master the student-directed classroom are geniuses, and I bet it takes a lot of practice and experience!

I found this picture (to the left) on Pinterest a while ago, and I believe that it is important for all people to be aware of. These are all valuable aspects of art in schools. I believe that every child who takes a student-directed art class will be able to successfully say they have achieved every single one of these values. As art teachers, we need to encourage group collaboration, dialogue, exploring, trying and possibly failing, and appreciating various points of view, to name a few. These expectations can only be learned on your own. Sure, teachers can guide students in the right direction, but I think that students can only excel in art when they are given the reigns to explore and learn on their own.

As I was looking around on the internet, I came upon a high school's art history project that really stood out to me in terms of student-directed learning. Even though it highlights a high school age level, I believe the project would work (with  modifications) for any many ages. The students created a music video and in that video the students designed and recreated famous pieces of art in which they, the students, were the main characters. This example of student-directed learning shows how the students put forth the passion and motivation to create these recognizable pieces of the art world. Allowing students to take the lead in learning experiences like this, will quite possibly result in more learning than initially supposed. From watching the video, I think the students enjoyed the activity as well.

http://apexhsart.blogspot.com/search/label/70top14

Art Classes as Directed by Children

While the concept of an art class that fully allows children to plan and decide their own art projects sounds promising and agreeable, I think there are many issues that we must consider. I remember back in high school, I wasn't sure what I wanted to do. Like many of my classmates, we were accustomed to receiving lessons, and learning how to do certain things through the teacher's instruction. I think the term "Magic Trick" may be harsh, because I feel that I received a great learning experience from my teacher's, even though they had "directed" our course of action. There is a certain discord in the classroom if one child wants to learn clay sculpting, another ceramics, and another wanting to learn printmaking. All of these projects require teacher assistance and ample time in order to attain the proper skills to execute. In my opinion, it is more beneficial to the class if the teacher educates them collectively, so that the students may help one another and learn in a timely and orderly manner. 

We could also say math teachers are also manipulative. Why do we have to learn calculus or trigonometry? Unless we want a career requiring higher leveled math skills, why are we taught these concepts that are forgotten in later stages of life? Although idealistically, we could live in a world where each child is taught exactly what they want to learn, it is hard to specifically meet the needs of each and every child, especially when there are so many students compared to teachers.

 I believe that the notion of the student choosing his or her medium of art to practice will allow for greater preparation for the future. However, there has to be a happy medium between structure and creativity. I think a good plan is to allow the students to suggest a variety of projects that they have interest in, while suggesting some new ideas for the students to learn. I am still only a student, so I don't know if my opinion is the best option. However, because I am a student, I know that there are a lot of areas that I am unfamiliar with and that I would not have thought up on my own, and having a teacher to guide me through new forms of art and ideas is extremely helpful.

I had learned to make linoleum block prints, stipple, and paper sculpting based on teacher instruction. She taught us the correct method to execute our projects, while still sticking to her lesson plan and also allowing us the creative freedom to come up with our own ideas pertaining to the particular project.