From math to art.

As mentioned in my previous post, I started out as a math education major in college. Why did I choose math education? Isn't that the exact opposite of art? Yes, but for some reason, math was always second best for me in school. I actually did really well in it and figured since art wasn't going to work out, math would have to be my second option.

I happened to enroll in a 5 credit calculus class of doom my first semester. As I started failing the tests and whatnot, I started picking up my pencil and sketching/drawing for fun. I purchased a sketchbook and thought about art again. I kept the sketchbook, so here are a couple of drawings from it:

As you can see, the first sketch has that "expressive" style thing that I thought the high school art teacher would like (which he hated even more), and then the second drawing, which came a few weeks later, has my original drawing style. I was able to stop with that scribble weird stuff, and go back to my more refined, smooth look. Oh and the reason I sketched Nefertiti was because my roommate had a little bronze statue of her in our dorm room.

Anyway, as I dug further and further into the dreaded "F" range with the math class, I thought about switching my major, but wasn't sure how to go about doing this. I had a lot of questions like, "Will I ever be able to get an art teaching job? Do I really want to deal with the disappointment of being told I'm a terrible lazy artist?" and other anxiety fueled fears. Eventually in the spring semester I just did it. I went in and changed my major. My GPA was terrible because of the horrible grades I got in that calc class and some other math class I took the spring semester, but once I changed my major my grades went up considerably.

Since my school was impacted by budget cuts and whatnot, I actually wasn't able to take a legitimate art class until my junior year. During that time I experimented with media I hadn't really used before. I enjoyed working in acrylic paint, so I did some little paintings of things my friends would like and random stuff. 

Here are a couple examples of those beginning paintings:

Even though those are not the greatest paintings in the world, it started to get me really excited for the art classes I would be taking during my junior year and beyond. Following this post will be college class art.

Magazine Cutout Project.

During my first year teaching, I taught four sections of Multimedia 1, and one Art 1 class. As a result, the planning I did for that class was more of a "fly by the seat of your pants" kind of deal because I would rather spend a ton of time having four classes planned really well than just one class. I would be at lunch and say things along the line of, "hey maybe today I should do portraiture...ok yeah...I will do that." Ten minutes later I was teaching portraiture...and well...the ten minute planning didn't always go over so well. That might be an understatement.

Anyway, I found myself in my little time looking at various websites and talking to other teachers about what they do in Art 1. I would gather ideas, but never knew what to really do with them. I didn't want to just bite off people, but that first year I just had to. Since everyone teaches differently, even when I tried to do a lesson exactly the same way as other teachers around me, my results were always different. My curriculum was a mess, I was a mess, and I was glad when that first year of teaching was over.

However, throughout these past few years, I have kept two lessons from year 1 that were actually successful. One being a creature made of forms that some people in my department showed me how to do and did my own thing with, and another being a magazine cutout/drawing project that I acquired from a teacher at a school in NY. This magazine cutout project has always been a really big hit with the kids and people who see the finished products. I'm not sure how the other teacher I got the idea from did it, but I saw a finished product and made my own directions to get to that point.

So these are the steps I use:

1) Look through magazines and various ads that stand out. You could teach a whole lesson on ads in general and graphic design and such if you want to get super into it. To be honest this is more of a "what do I do now" kind of assignment - as in, when the students finish a project early, they can work on this for fun/something that looks awesome.

2) Take the magazine and cut it into 1 - 1 1/2 inch diagonal strips. You could also change the way you cut the strips if you want to get creative.

3) Glue down every other strip on a white drawing/sulfite paper, leaving every other space white for the students to color in. Make sure the students keep the strips that aren't glued down, as they need it for reference. Also, make sure they keep them in order so they don't get confused.

4) Students should use Prismacolors to color in the white areas and complete the magazine ad. Prismacolors just work better to give the glossy look and blending colors in general. Obviously if you're working with younger kids or don't have the budget at your school for Prismacolors, Crayola should suffice.

Finished product:

My roots.

My earliest art-making memories include coloring books with my grandmother and family friends. "Color in the lines" was a common phrase I remember hearing. As a youngster, my mom saw some sort of knack I had for art and really pushed me to color and draw and do all sorts of art. One Christmas I got an easel that had a chalk board, white board, and some sort of paper roll that I could use tempera paint on. That thing was awesome.

Anyway, when I entered elementary school, the schools in California had already cut art programs from elementary school. The only art we did was with parent volunteers or the teacher usually had us make a placemat around the holidays. I still have some sort of hand turkey and a decorated pine cone. When I was 10, I moved to New York where they still had/have art programs in elementary/middle school. I remember getting my schedule for the 5th grade and seeing an art class on there and being super excited (this was also before I met some of my peers who made middle school totally unfun and terrible). My first art teacher was Ms. Finkler (who later became Mrs. Armstrong), and I only remember her because she was indeed my first art teacher, and a damn good one at that. Her art class made such an impact on me that I kept my portfolio (rather, my mom did), and I have a couple of pieces from then.

The piece above is a watercolor still life. I thought I did good on it, but it never made it into the display case at school, so I was kind of sad, but not enough to be discouraged or anything, because like I said, Ms. Finkler was awesome (total run on sentence, oh well).

Life continued on, and I continued doing art. Art was actually my outlet from the torment and whatnot that middle school brought to me. By 8th grade I had another awesome art teacher named Ms. Korn if I remember correctly. She was this awesome hippie lady who was another person to push me with the art making. I might have also had her in 7th grade. I feel like I had her twice, but really, this is 15 years ago we are talking about here and I can't remember much. We did one-point perspective words, so I did this piece:

I kept that, but nothing else from that year, so I'm not sure what else we did in class.

The next year was high school, which I label the beginning of the end. I had a cool studio art teacher. I felt bad for her because kids in our class threw erasers at her and made her cry. She retired the year after our class. She never really overly pushed anyone into art, which in a way was a good thing because it's not like she had favorites or anything, she was just kind of over her job at that point (and I could see why with people throwing erasers at her). During that time I made a bunch of stuff I kept:

Still life with...potatoes?

The next year I enrolled in Drawing and Painting. This is where things went bad. I had a teacher who essentially didn't like me. He had his "chosen ones" we will say, who he pushed into Pratt and such, and I was not on his radar for going into art school. The first drawing I ever did in his class, he actually kept. After that he never even took a slide of my work and just gave me grades that I think he picked out of a hat. I didn't mind since they were all A's, but I never saw a rubric of any kind.

When I got into his class I thought my art was pretty decent for a 10th grader. Like, if I had students come in with this ability, I would be impressed:

Then the next year I noticed he didn't really care for my art, and seemed to go for people with more "expressive" styles...so I tried out this new style for myself hoping he would maybe pay attention to my stuff:

After two years of doing the same exact projects...I expected to still take AP Studio and still pursue my goal of being some sort of artist. I knew this teacher didn't like me, but I was still going to take what I needed to do my thing. Unfortunately, my plans failed as this teacher told me I was "too lazy to be an artist" and he didn't recommend me for AP. I went home crying that day and my mom had a meeting with him. He straight up told her that, yes, I was indeed too lazy to be an artist and that I should probably do something else. For some unknown reason, I still signed up for his damn drawing and painting class again for a third year (since I couldn't take AP Studio), and created some scary scribbly stuff:

The scariest piece of all.

To be honest, I don't even have all my work from senior year because I ditched half the classes. I went into college the following year as a math education major. My major obviously changed and I will get into that at a later date.

Color Theory in Adobe Illustrator.

After I go over color theory, it's best to put that theory into practice. I generally have the students create a twelve-color color wheel that is "out of the ordinary" (not the usual circles with colors in them) to show their knowledge, and then move the unit towards a Monochromatic Portrait. By the end of the color unit, the students know color theory, portraiture in Adobe Illustrator, and acquire awesome Pen Tool skills.

Here are some examples of the color wheels, and the requirements/rubric sheets:

Color Wheel Requirements

Color Wheel Rubric

Moving on in this post...once the color wheels are/were completed, the students begin/began their Monochromatic Portraits. I used to just have the students pick someone they like to trace in Adobe Illustrator and turn them into avatars. This year I decided to get a little "deeper" and have the students choose someone they consider a hero to portray. I actually created a hero unit in a grad class, and wanted to use one of the lessons from that, so this became the hybrid.

At first the students felt a bit overwhelmed when they saw examples of what they were going to do. Once they actually began the assignment, they liked their work. The requirements sheet and rubric are pretty self explanatory with what the kids need to do. I will also include a homework sheet I made up before the students began the assignment.

Hero Homework

Monochromatic Portrait Requirements

Monochromatic Portrait Rubric

Teaching Perspective in Adobe Illustrator.

Originally when I started this blog, I thought I would be updating on a weekly basis with my lessons and such. However, a few grad classes and huge life decisions made it hard to actually take the time to blog. So here I am, near the end of the summer, finally taking out my curriculum and looking things over. I figure I should start with lessons that were particularly successful that people have been waiting for me to post up. Since I got a new computer a few months ago, not all my actual lesson plan files are on this computer, but I do have my handouts and examples. I think that should suffice.

Anyway, I generally begin my Multimedia and Art 1 classes with the Elements of Art and slowly build everything on that. I also familiarize my students with the basic function of a Mac computer and do a lot of pre-assessments to see where they are computer and art wise. Once I do the usual value scales, texture rubbings, line drawings, forms, etc. (you should know the drill if you're an art teacher), I begin larger assignments. One of my old favorites is the perspective unit. I'm not going to go into how I do it in Art 1, as most general art teachers know how to do that - it's the computer thing that can get kind of tricky - especially if you're working in CS4 and older.

Perspective is hard just using rulers and pencils, add a computer that students may not be familiar with, and things can get really complicated. I generally go over  how to use guides, lines, and basic geometric shapes in Adobe Illustrator. I show how the lines all go to the vanishing point, and what a horizon line and all of that looks like/is. The students follow along and do it with me so they don't get totally lost. Once I go over basics, I go over light sources and how to achieve that look using the program.

I've always taught the perspective unit near the beginning of the school year because (at least to me) I think it's a great combination of all the Elements of Art I went over the first few weeks and just makes sense. To me it shows that the kids "get" the Elements of Art when they put all of them to use for this big assignment.

So here goes...following this will be the files for the requirements (box.com is annoying and will say you don't have "permission" or something, so just click on the link anyway), rubric, and self-assessment based on Feldman's method of questioning the students did at the end of the assignment, and a couple of examples. You can take whatever you want from here and turn it into your own fabulous lesson somehow. This blog was created so you could get ideas and turn them into your own (or use the same material I have).

Perspective City Requirements

Perspective City Checklist Rubric

Perspective City Self-Assessment

Philosophy Statement

This is my most recent philosophy statement. Click on the link below. It might tell you I don't have permission to post direct links, so just click on the direct link from that page and it will work. I think this is a good way to start my blog. It was written for an art education masters class through Boston University, so it's a bit dry (it has all sorts of fancy research in it). If you actually read it, it breaks down everything I believe in as an arts educator.

Philosophy Statement