Storytelling Through Art

Creating Relationships
 Each student was given a piece of fabric with the face of an Asian character.  The blank page was to become the place for a story to unfold. What was hidden behind each face?   The possibilities were endless.

"...Nobody knew how Jui mon was going to do it, but they knew he could.  Jui mon had to practice very hard.  He walked on hot coals to practice climbing the stairs of fire. "

"The King locked the prince in the dungeon.  He said the princess is all mine."

Artwork and stories by 3rd grade students. 

Celebrations

Winning the Corn Festival Race
1st Grade Student

I love this celebration artwork because it makes you visually anticipate what's going to happen next.
Kindergarten Student.

Happy Day
4th Grade Student

This is the celebration of the departure of the Titanic.
3rd Grade Student





Concept: Celebrations
Essential Questions:
Why do we celebrate?  Who celebrates? How do we celebrate? How does art help us understand celebrations from other cultures and our own?  Is it important to celebrate? Do celebrations bring us closer as a whole?


That's how we started this lesson, by looking at celebratory artworks throughout history and sharing our own stories of celebrations.  I tried this lesson with various classes from K-4th.  I must say it was successful at each grade level because the students were able to connect the concept of celebrations to their own life experience and what is important to them.

Imagining Underground Worlds

In this lesson the students worked as artists to imagine an underground world or setting.  The question was how could they, as artists show this place. We discussed how artists can use space and viewpoint as tools to communicate their ideas.  We looked at and discussed the quilt Mother Earth and her Children which you can see here,  it is such a fabulous piece to explore!  Another favorite part of this lesson is reading the thoughts and feelings the kids have about their work.  Having them write about it helps them understand their own work better and develop a true relationship with it.   As a viewer, it makes you go back and explore the artwork more thoughtfully by looking at the details and seeing things you failed to notice before.  Notice below what Rosaura wrote about the dad rabbit being afraid as he is watching the coyote; now look at the expression on his face.

Abstract Crowds

This lesson is about abstraction, simplification of shapes and overlapping.  We first made a few sketches in order to get the shapes super basic or simple.  They could choose any situation in which to place a group of people.  We used liquid watercolors to paint everything in except for the black bands, those were painted with black acrylic to get the opaque contrast quality. Wherever one part of an image overlapped another, that is where the color would change. When they were finished with the painting, they could choose whether they wanted to cut it into strips and reassemble it for even more movement.  Only one student  decided to take this risk which is the single image on top.  If you look at the bottom of the picture you can see how she placed her strips.  To sharpen everything up in the end, we used sharpies to go over the lines.



...And here is a video of the creative process at work!

Identity Through Name Design

Identity- How Do The Colors Represent Me?

Jose:
The colors I chose for my Name Design artwork are purple and green.  Green shows that I am natural.  I know this because I don't drink or smoke or do drugs. Plus, my Grandmother had a chart explaining what each color meant.  Purple shows that I am extreme.  I believe this is true because one day I jumped from a roof into a trampoline and I was wearing purple which was ironic.

This is a lesson that's been around awhile but I have tweaked it by adding what I call The Identity Card which I feel adds so much more meaning to the work.  That's what you read above.  I love to see them think about "why" they chose a certain color.  It helps them understand themselves better as artists, gives meaning to their work, and helps them see it in a completely new light.  

Process:

• Discuss positive and negative space in artwork. 
• Section your paper into about 14 sections or so and in each section write a letter of your name or a number of the year you were born.  I have them do this lightly so the lines will not show.
• Color in the negative space in chosen color.
• Color in the positive space in another color.  
• (I actually let them vary the colors of positive or negative space so long as I know they understand the concept.)  I also tell them they can choose 1-3 colors.

Formal Court Robes

Having an appreciation for other cultures is such a valuable part of who we are.  I believe lessons like this one  
help to bridge the gap of understanding between cultures even if it's just a bit. We looked at Imperial Chinese portraits and thought about the "why's" of everything.  Why are they not smiling?  Why are they almost completely covered?  What might the symbols mean?  By looking and trying to understand we help develop our sense of appreciation of the world and other cultures.
I also did this lesson with some 3rd and 4th grade classes.  To see the process click here.

More Than Your Basic Link...really!

This was a fun project for 2nd grade. We looked at some of Picasso's abstract portraits to get us started and talked a bit about abstract art.  Next I demonstrated the process for creating a linked image.    We started off with a narrow strip of paper and folded it accordion style.  Next, with a pencil they designed an unusual shape (making sure at least one part of the drawing was connected to the sides of the paper) and cut it out while the paper was still folded.  Once this was done, they opened their papers and tried to visualize a character.  Even though each piece is exactly the same, they were challenged by creating a different character for each one.  One of the best parts of this lesson is to actually see this white sheet of paper come to life.  It almost has 2 stages: the unfolding is a marvelous thing and the second  is seeing each "character" develop a personality.

Tips:
Remind them to keep the design simple so they will not have a problem cutting.
Use a light weight paper (11x14  copy paper would be perfect, just cut it in half lengthwise). 

Mask/Armour- If You Can Dream It, You Can Make It!

These masks/armour pieces were done by my 5th grade boys. I started off by telling them they were going to design some type of armour  (of course this instantly got their attention!) but they could not copy anything from a game, movie, etc.     There design could be for the past, present or future and it had to show all or most of the parts of a suit or armour.  To help them with this I gave them a few handouts that I found  here,  here, and here.  After their designs were complete I told them they were now going to make the head piece  they had drawn. If you look at the pictures, you can see  the ideas came straight from a drawing because most of them are missing  a back panel.   I showed them how to do a basic head band mask and they had to go from there.  Yes, there were many doubts as to their ability to make this happen!  I could only assure them that it was possible and encouraged them to try and fail, try and fail, try something else, and one of those times...it would work!  Voila!

Animal Drawings

These are from 3rd Grade.  Their challenge was to draw an animal and create the texture of the skin or fur by repeating lines or shapes.  I placed small animal figurines at each table so they could choose which ever animal they liked. When they were done with their drawings the wrote a short poem about their animal.  I'm super happy with the results!

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.


Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

Artists as Designers-Designing Wrapping Paper

The kids were excited to learn that artists are responsible for designing mostly everything we see or use in our lives. Clothes, furniture, accessories and so much more are all the work of designers. By understanding this kids begin to realize the importance of design in our everyday lives. Here Kinder and First Grade students designed a wrapping paper with a motif. Sometimes they bring so much more to the table than we may expect... the student that created the first image said, "Look, I created an emotions motif." How wonderful is that?