500 bad drawings

“You’ve got at least 500 bad drawings in you. Get them out as soon as possible.”

I’ve leaned on this quote often as I’ve taught AP art to high school seniors for the past year and a half. The students who have embraced this idea of inevitable failure are the ones who have learned the most in the long run.

Recently I was in a conference with student and parent when a sports analogy seemed to help. When learning to play basketball, it surely takes many, many shots to improve free-throw shots. The player realizes this and isn’t fazed by it. The missed shots aren’t failures. They’re expected in order to improve.

But when it comes to artwork, “talented” students expect to make beautiful drawings at every attempt. Repeated bad drawing can paralyze some students. Perfectionism or a strong desire for the approval of others can further cause discouragement and some students even give up. (Something I can relate to. Mine comes in the form of avoiding certain media.)

If the artist is a Christian, the fact that this is rooted in sin isn’t entirely bad news. Sin can be repented of. Our savior has died for sins. We can receive his forgiveness and ask him for help to avoid sinning in the future. And we can live in the promise that we are not in bondage to sin.

So there is freedom to make awkward drawings and paintings! Since we’re just humans and students, we shouldn’t be surprised at our own weaknesses. Let’s embrace our humble abilities and make those 500 drawings with abandon!

3-D snowflake

Why wait for a snow day? Create and Rotate a 3-D snowflake! (and then ask your students to figure out HOW)

Incredible Art Department

Judy Decker runs the Incredible Art Department, an extensive resourse of teacher contributed lesson plans and ideas. With varying degrees of sophistication, the scores of lessons are a great place to brainstorm and adapt suggestions to meet your own classroom personality and needs.

2 Art Teacher blogs

I just discovered artjunction.org, "the art teacher's guide to the internet". This post is helpful, the author links to online school galleries that show student work.

The Carrot Revolution, (referencing a Cezanne quote) is another art teacher resource, whose aim seems to be linking to inspiring ideas.

Simple Shapes combine to make Complex Shapes

The musty smell of old library books in the humid heat of Houston summers almost nauseated me as a kid. But it didn't keep me from hauling a tall pile of books home from the public library. Ed Emberley books were probably some of my favorites. What a delight to discover that he is still publishing books and children are still learning to draw from these simple instructional texts.

Ed Emberley teaches drawing in a squential and very logical approach. A bottom row explains the simple marks or shapes that you, the artist, will add. The top row shows the growing combination of shapes that are creating some fun charcater, vehicle, or other complex drawing that most children would shy away from attempting because of the complexity.

Last week I adapted his instructions to draw a locomotive with my third graders and a swamp creature with my fourth graders. They loved it and seemed surprised that they could accomplish such complex drawings one simple shape at a time.

first pic

Can I really add photos here? Oh the possibilities!

Well here are my AP students earlier this month on our annual DC field trip to National Gallery. This is at the Cathedral gardens where we ate our Jumbo-pizza lunch. We call this the "band shot".

Links

Some inspiring links:

• I like Keri Smith's series: Morning Collages, Plywood Series and Fun with Stickers.
• MoMa's "Destination Modern Art". a site for kids from The Museum on Modern Art. I stumbled on it through the illustrator's webpage. He (Brian Biggs) makes pretty great illustrations.
• Invisible Man is a blog of some working artists sharing as they go. Nice work, and I like the community idea.
• I want to do one of these: Sketchcrawl: Draw all day as you travel throughout a city.