Drawing/Painting 1
Lessons 1: Alter Ego Portrait and (formerly) Contour Self-Portrait
- Technical Skills: students learned basic portrait anatomy and using sighting/measuring to capture the realistic appearance of their faces. The alter ego portrait served as a formative assessment of basic portrait skills. Formal instruction on specific portrait drawing didn't happen until lesson 2. Contour drawing helped them learn realism without getting distracted by shading or coloring.
- Conceptual Skills: students were given more creative freedom to write the backstory of their alter ego and stylize their character. Students used the emergenetics profile and enneagram traits to determine who their alter ego was. Grading had a heavier focus on how stylization and caricaturization communicated the personality of the alter ego. Technical skills were not as much of a focus.
- History and Culture: The role of portraiture in history (documenting a person in time before photography was invented, representing a person in a position of power, depicting a religious/mythological figure, social justice commentary, telling a story or showing an emotion, and dream-like experiences/surrealism)
- Learning Benefits: students had balanced opportunities for technical training and creative freedom. They appreciated exploring both sides of their artistic execution. Students that were nervous about their artistic skills felt more confident with the alter ego project. Students had an opportunity to practice sighting and measuring, which was a skill they used for future projects.
Adaptive Art Curriculum
- If students do not understand how to create an alter ego portrait, then they are prompted to create a self-portrait. Students with fine motor skill challenges are provided with a portrait stencil to create a base face. From there, they can add details for a self-portrait or an alter ego. Students with fine motor skill struggles have a portrait template they can trace as a base. Students with visual impairments have a portrait template made of cardboard that's easier to trace tactilely.
Lesson 2: Blind Contour Caricatures
- Technical Skills: exaggerated portrait anatomy, blind contour drawing (hand/eye coordination), creating zentangle patterns based on the principles of design
- Conceptual Skills: combining blind contour drawings and caricature drawings (exaggerated facial features) for humor
- History and Culture: comparing and contrasting blind contour drawings with caricature drawings, examining the purpose of humor in portraits
- Learning Benefits: a high success project for students that had strong technical drawing skills and students that were nervous about drawing. It also taught students how to release perfectionistic control and redefine what's considered "pretty art." Finally, it improved students' hand/eye coordination and careful observation of their subjects, which improved their representational drawing skills
Adaptive Art Curriculum
- Students with special needs are easily able to create a blind contour portrait, or a semi-blind contour portrait. Students reference zentangle patterns to make their own. With fine motor skill challenges, students are given the choice to draw patterns on a bigger scale (and less of them required) or they can stamp patterns onto large paper using tempera paint.
Lesson. 3: Geometric Value Drawing
- Technical Skills: compositional planning (rule of thirds), drawing geometric shapes with a ruler, soft-shading, value contrast
- Conceptual Skills: students learn about creating an abstract composition using only geometric shapes. They create areas of visual interest using contrast (shapes and values)
- History and Culture: contemporary abstract geometric artists and art movements (art deco, cubism, Pablo Picasso, Piet Mondrian, Paul Klee, Mags Ocampo, and Emma Kunz). I showed students my own work, since I create abstract geometric graphite drawings.
- Learning Benefits: cross-curricular relationship between art and math, compositional planning using the rule of thirds, drawing with a ruler.
Adaptive Art Curriculum
- Students use stencils to create large and small scale shapes. Students have the option to create a range of values using pencil or watercolor paint. Pencil pressure may be challenging for some SSN students that have fine motor skill challenges, so pre-mixed paint (watercolor or tempera) teaches students how to work with a range of values.
Lesson 4: Sneaker Drawing
- Technical Skills: sighting/measuring to create a proportionally accurate shoe
- Conceptual Skills: students have the option to color their shoe from life or create an imaginative/themed design.
- History and Culture: sneaker culture, contemporary sneaker sculptures, posters of sneakers (Sheppard Fairey and Nancy Stadlee), paintings of sneakers (Raphael Crump and Henry Gunderson).
- Learning Benefits: like the portrait drawing projects, students had balanced opportunities for technical training and creative freedom. They appreciated exploring both sides of their artistic execution.Students had an opportunity to practice sighting and measuring, which had improved since the contour self-portrait.
No Background (2020 only)
With Background (2021 to present)
Adaptive Art Curriculum
- Students are given a template to trace a shoe. Just like other students, they can be realistic or imaginative with designs and colors. Students may need to work on a larger scale if they prefer to be more gestural with coloring. Students can also trace a shoe from a photocopy, or they can draw from observation.
Lesson 5: One-Point Perspective Name Drawing
- Technical Skills: drawing geometric shapes in one-point perspective
- Conceptual Skills: designing letters to represent the artist's personality
- History and Culture: history and purpose of linear perspective
- Learning Benefits: students learn how to draw one-point perspective with simple shapes without using basic geometric shapes. Block letters are easy to draw in one-point perspective.
Adaptive Art Curriculum
- Students use a peer or an EA to hold the ruler to draw vanishing point lines. They also need "connect the dots" guidance on which parts of the letters need to connect to the vanishing point. Sometimes this can be indicated verbally, and other times indicated visually. Students can use stencils to trace their letters or freehand them. Accommodations can be given to only draw first name, abbreviated name, or three initials.
Lesson 6: Two Point Perspective Treehouse
- Technical Skills: drawing objects in two-point perspective
- Conceptual Skills: designing a treehouse (realistic or fantastical)
- History and Culture: history and purpose of two-point perspective
- Learning Benefits: drawing architecture in correct perspective with complex details, learning how to get comfortable with drawing backgrounds and environments.
Adaptive Art Curriculum
- Students completed the two point perspective box demo as a formative assessment on their ability to draw an object in two point perspective. Though most students can do this demo, two point perspective can be frustrating and anxiety-provoking for them when drawing a treehouse. One modified curriculum is to have students design their own treehouse. Another modification is to have students trace squares and connect the corners to both vanishing points. They can paint or color within the shapes or layering on top of them.
Lesson 7: Abstract Watercolor Painting
- Technical Skills: learning how to use different watercolor techniques, specifically wet-on-wet, reinforcing pen-and-ink skills such as zentangle designs
- Conceptual Skills: creating pen-and-ink designs and patterns in an abstract manner based on the wet-on-wet splotches
- History and Culture: Emma Larsson, Elise Morris, Justin Margitch, Claire Cowie
- Learning Benefits: students are challenged to do creative problem-solving to create an abstract image based on the marks that are naturally made by watercolor.
Adaptive Art Curriculum
- Students are capable of using a limited color scheme and practicing all ten watercolor techniques. They may need to work on a bigger sheet of paper.
Lesson 8: Aurora Borealis Painting (20-21 only)
- Technical Skills: using wet-on-wet watercolor painting skills to create a landscape, specifically an aurora borealis sky
- Conceptual Skills: creating the visual essence of an aurora borealis
- History and Culture: the scientific cause of aurora borealis, professional watercolor paintings of aurora borealis
- Learning Benefits: students build their watercolor painting skills with both wet-on-wet and standard painting techniques. Students are also using these skills to learn how to replicate a picture.
Lesson 8: Notan Animal Portrait
- Technical Skills: drawing symmetrical animal portraits in either a realistic or tribal style, mixing and using acrylic paint (depends on COVID situation)
- Conceptual Skills: students learned about different color schemes (primary, secondary, tertiary, complimentary, and analogous) and working within a limited palette range by choosing one of the color schemes
- History and Culture: students learned about this history and practice of Japanese Notan art
- Learning Benefits: students identified various color schemes and strategically mix light/dark colors based on contrast. Whether they chose a realistic or stylized approach to their animal, they developed a strong understanding of bilateral symmetry and design.
Adaptive Art Curriculum
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Lesson 10: Surreal Portrait
- Technical Skills: continual practice of portrait drawing
- Conceptual Skills: how to integrate a surreal image and concept into the project
- History and Culture: what is surrealism and examples of surreal artists (Salvador Dali, René Magritte, Henrietta Harris, Tran Nguyen, Alex Garant, Miles Johnson, Junji Ito, Tawny Chapman)
- Learning Benefits: students continue to practice portrait drawing, as well as warping a portrait to create a surreal concept. This reduces pressure on students to create a realistic portrait.
Adaptive Art Curriculum
- If students struggle with drawing a portrait freehand, they are given a portrait drawing stencil to trace. Surrealism is up to their interpretation, though a "dream" portrait resonates with them more. For students that struggled to understand what surrealism is in a conceptual way, they were asked to combine a portrait with an animal.
Lesson 11: Monster Bash (20-21 only)
- Technical and Conceptual Skills: students randomly select five monster body parts and are challenged to put the parts together to create a strange monster hybrid with a background and backstory. The monsters have to be posed in a way that show their personality, how they attack, and whether they're friend or foe.
- History and Culture: students learn about the YouTube Monster Bash challenge, created by various YouTubers that are known for crafting and sculpting.
- Learning Benefits: imaginative creative problem-solving without any pressure to draw something realistically.