Art teachers develop a variety of lessons that encourage students to become independent and confident artists. High-school students learning remotely create image portfolios documenting their experiences during the 2020 pandemic, middle-school students choose a personal color scheme and create magnetic baking-pan portraits, young students use popular toy bricks in a colorful printmaking activity, an art teacher explores the various items in their pantry to create paint alternatives, and more.
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Independence—isn’t that a quality you want your students to develop? The need for student independence is essential, now more than ever, in light of this unprecedented pandemic.
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I’m definitely not the only person to be enamored by the order and repetition that are so quintessentially LEGO. Aside from building, there are lots of artistic applications for these tiny plastic interlocking bricks that kids love. I was inspired by projects I’ve seen where students press LEGO bricks into clay bowls to be fired, design complex building blueprints by using the bricks as stamps, and use them as a relief surface for printmaking.
I’ve always been interested in painting on alternative surfaces. From wood to glass to silk and beyond, I wanted to experiment with whatever surfaces I could find. Paint has a unique quality on each surface it’s used on, and I am always excited to see the results.
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I love teaching my elementary students about the wonderful world of art history. I think it’s important to remind them that visual art is what documents our world. One of my favorite artists is Joan Miró. His creative, surrealistic creatures are a wonderful way to teach line, shape, and color theory, and kids are always enthralled with his unique style, so I thoroughly enjoy using his work to inspire my students.
After reading Pick Your Nose & Make a Face by Anne Maxwell- Weisbrod (A. Weisbrod Designs, 2003), I knew I had the perfect project idea for my students. The book features head, neck, and shoulder paintings with attachable magnetic facial features to create clever, unique faces.
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Often, students enter the art studio to begin a painting project, only to be given a watercolor set that is empty or has colors mixed up together. There’s nothing like the feeling of using new art supplies! With this in mind, I wanted students to create their own clay watercolor painting set that they would use for future art projects.
Introducing new concepts via remote learning during a pandemic has its challenges. I asked my students, who were new to photography, to embrace the hand we were dealt and to document this historical time through storytelling with photography.
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I find that my students have a really hard time working intuitively and creating art that is solely about the beauty of the marks they make. They tend to want to create something that is realistic, and this is how they also place value on work they view. I set out to create a lesson that pushed students to be experimental with media and to learn to see the true beauty in mark-making.
My classes often begin with a five-minute demonstration, inspiration, or planning activity. Students decide what they’re going to do for the day, but they have to record it in a self-monitoring device for the TAB (Teaching for Artistic Behavior) classroom called a “studio tracker.” Students track what centers they’re visiting, what ideas they’re working on, and more.
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Justin Favela is a multidisciplinary artist who creates life-size sculptures of objects such as low-rider cars, murals of Mexican landscapes, and reproductions of well-known works of art. He forms these works from hundreds of pieces of brightly colored crêpe paper, imitating the style of piñatas, encouraging viewers to look critically at cultural stereotypes.
