Lessons for visual art education – where it's about the process, not the product
Category: 6th grade
Description of the Unit – Students will create fantastical, energetic self-portraits inspired by the portraits of George Littlechild. Students will use a mix of sharpie markers, colored pencils, watercolor and acrylic paint for their portraits.
Description of the Unit – Students will explore the centuries-old geometric patterns found in Islamic architecture. Students will use mathematical techniques as instructed in Eric Bourg’s marvelous book, Islamic Geometric Patterns, to re-create a variety of the patterns they have explored through their observations.
Description of the Unit – Students will examine and discuss the work of artist Yaacov Agam, and through his inspiration they will create their own Agamograph, a kinetic work of art that transforms from one image to another, depending on the viewers’ perspective.
Activity statement – Yaacov Agam is an Israeli artist best known for his pioneering Kinetic Art. His lenticular prints, or Agamographs, made illusory images appear depending on the audience’s viewpoint. These pieces ask one to contemplate change, progress, time, and our role as observer vs. participant. Students will consider images of concepts, creatures or objects which can shift or change in some way, and incorporate their chosen concept into an Agamograph. To successfully create an Agamograph, students will need to make precise mathematical measurements throughout the entire process. Students will have the choice of coloring in their Agamographs in marker, colored pencil, oil pastel and watercolor (for backgrounds)—or a combination of any or all of these media.
Goals – Students should…
Understand:
Know:
Be able to:
Resources and Materials –
Questions – (first few questions pertain to observing Agam’s work)
Evaluation – Did students:
Informal:
The following are video representations of 6th grade students’ Agamographs:
The following are photos of 6th grade student Agamographs displaying both sides of each piece:
Description of the Unit – Building upon what students learned in 5th grade about product advertisement in print (https://anitasagastegui.com/2020/07/27/5th-grade-print-advertising-and-cultivating-visual-literacy/), students in 6th grade will look at ads from NGO, nonprofit and charitable organizations to examine how imagery and elements of design are used to sway people to a particular cause. It is interesting to go back and look at the 5th grade product advertisements, comparing them to the 6th grade NGO ads. Reinforcing and reviewing what they studied last year has helped to make the nonprofit ads all the more visually dynamic and sophisticated, as you can see. Students will work in groups to create a non-profit organization of their own, complete with mission statement and logo, and one advertisement aimed at convincing viewers to donate or work for their organization’s cause. To test the ads’ effectiveness, we will have a contest between the groups, with faculty, as well as students in 3rd-8th grades voting on the most eye-catching and persuasive ad.
Description of the Unit –
Students will learn about the life and work of artist Stephen Wiltshire. Using his incredibly detailed drawings of buildings and cityscapes, students will create a mini architectural drawing that they will then transfer onto foil.
Description of the Unit –
We begin by diving into the fascinating art of CJ Hendry. Hendry expresses having no formal art training and considers herself “not very creative.” Yet she’s a dedicated, innovative artist whose works are primarily hyper-realistic, large scale pencil drawings of (mostly) luxury objects that sometimes take 200 hours to complete. Working with pencil on paper her pieces are achieved through layers of what she refers to as scribbles. Watching her work (you can see some fun videos of her at work here: https://youtu.be/KB8vc9M4QWs and https://youtu.be/KixMpzhMS-o) students become awe-struck by the way her tireless pencil strokes become such lifelike, more-than-photographic representations of real-life objects. They wonder aloud how she does it, exclaiming that they would love to draw like Hendry. I tell them that this unit will give them a foundation for getting there.
Description of the Unit –
Students will practice a variety of painting techniques (including color mixing and brush effects) for acrylic painting, practicing these for various effects. Students will then choose a nature postcard to use as a reference for their own painting. Students will eventually create at least two different paintings in acrylic of two different nature scenes, trying to use the techniques learned to recreate specific textures and effects.
Description of the Unit –
Observing the distorted gestural figure sculptures of Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966), as well as the elongated, rhythmic figure paintings by Ernie Barnes (1938-2009) that both emphasize and exaggerate long limbs, students will create similarly distorted, gestural sculptures primarily out of wire.
The Whimsical Art of Joan Miró
Description of the Unit –
Students discovered the work of Joan Miró (1893-1983), a modern artist who blended thoughtful, “high art” concepts with spontaneous, playful designs that captured the imagination and challenged then-current notions of what constituted “good” art. A Miró tableau employed a muted, sparsely colored background with childlike doodles, geometric shapes and blocks of mostly primary color as foreground.
Guided by a similar sense of play, whimsy and surprise, students reproduced similarly styled, playful designs of their own.
In the K-8 Art Studio with Anita Sagastegui 