Lesson 1: Day 6
Project/Unit Description/Expedition:
Attention Researchers: Your Creative Thinking Labs are up and running successfully! Well done. Your first mission is to research, design and create a brand new planet for Earth’s inhabitants to live on after the meteor hits! All researchers will need to come together to decide what 5 characteristics the new planet will need for the inhabitants to survive… Then each researcher will design and create their new world by planning/sketching, drawing and finally painting their brand new Ideal World and Habitat they would want to live in!
Today, students will be critiquing a work in progress. Then continuing their painting process using any reflections they had during the critique to create the final piece they have envisioned.
Essential Understanding (s):
Inquiry/Learning Target:
Students will complete their acrylic paintings and reflect upon them through a written worksheet and with partner video interviews.
Key Concepts:
Skills:
Art Focus:
Students will refine and complete their acrylic painting. After completion, they will reflect upon their artistic decisions and efficacy.
Literacy Focus:
Students will be using vocabulary they have already learned during their critique- terms including overlapping, foreground, middle ground and background, light and shadow...etc. They will be writing responses to questions on a worksheet about their artistic process and results, and verbally communicating four of these responses to a partner during a video interview.
Documentation:
The students finished their paintings today! They completed a worksheet with the following questions:
1. What do you like about this piece?
2. Is there anything you dislike? Why?
3. If you could go back in time, what would you do differently?
4. What are differences between your original idea and your final piece? (Please explain at least 2)
5. Where in your painting do you see foreground / middle ground / background? (describe as best as you can!)
6. Where in your painting do you see Light direction and shadow? (describe as best as you can!)
7. How did you use Color mixing in your painting? (describe as best as you can!)
8. Is there anything else you want to say about your painting?
Afterwards, they paired up with another student who finished at the same time. Each student chose four of the above questions that they wanted to talk about in the critique. Their partner asked them these questions and recorded video of their responses. Here is some of the learning that happened today!
Attention Researchers: Your Creative Thinking Labs are up and running successfully! Well done. Your first mission is to research, design and create a brand new planet for Earth’s inhabitants to live on after the meteor hits! All researchers will need to come together to decide what 5 characteristics the new planet will need for the inhabitants to survive… Then each researcher will design and create their new world by planning/sketching, drawing and finally painting their brand new Ideal World and Habitat they would want to live in!
Today, students will be critiquing a work in progress. Then continuing their painting process using any reflections they had during the critique to create the final piece they have envisioned.
Essential Understanding (s):
- Works of art reflect the experiences of the artist.
- Individual aesthetic and empathetic awareness developed through engagement with art can lead to understanding and appreciation of self, others, the natural world, and constructed environments.
Inquiry/Learning Target:
Students will complete their acrylic paintings and reflect upon them through a written worksheet and with partner video interviews.
Key Concepts:
- Reflection
- Artistic Intention
Skills:
- Generating or assessing solutions
- Comparing and contrasting ideas with actual practice
Art Focus:
Students will refine and complete their acrylic painting. After completion, they will reflect upon their artistic decisions and efficacy.
Literacy Focus:
Students will be using vocabulary they have already learned during their critique- terms including overlapping, foreground, middle ground and background, light and shadow...etc. They will be writing responses to questions on a worksheet about their artistic process and results, and verbally communicating four of these responses to a partner during a video interview.
Documentation:
The students finished their paintings today! They completed a worksheet with the following questions:
1. What do you like about this piece?
2. Is there anything you dislike? Why?
3. If you could go back in time, what would you do differently?
4. What are differences between your original idea and your final piece? (Please explain at least 2)
5. Where in your painting do you see foreground / middle ground / background? (describe as best as you can!)
6. Where in your painting do you see Light direction and shadow? (describe as best as you can!)
7. How did you use Color mixing in your painting? (describe as best as you can!)
8. Is there anything else you want to say about your painting?
Afterwards, they paired up with another student who finished at the same time. Each student chose four of the above questions that they wanted to talk about in the critique. Their partner asked them these questions and recorded video of their responses. Here is some of the learning that happened today!
Above is a slideshow of every student's final painting! Below, there are six different examples of the student video interview critiques, with more specific evaluation of their learning.
Student 1 showed an especially clear understanding of how to create foreground, middle ground and background. She accurately identifies these in the interview, showing that she had reflected on them throughout her process. Her planning and painting consistently showed good depth, because she didn't make all of her objects sitting on the bottom of the canvas like many other students did. Also, the student exhibited creativity by having her ponies at a variety of different heights along the canvas, though they were all still similar sizes, showing their proximity to the viewer and the fact that they were flying. Her description of the mountains being "way too dark" related to her understanding of light and shadow, because she originally wanted them to be lighter near the sun.
Student 2 added the green ground, which he points to at 0:16, after he tried to explain his use of foreground, middle ground and background to the teacher at the beginning of the class period and realized he hadn't made those very clear. His storm cloud at the top of the canvas shows clear light direction and shadow, but he struggled to keep lighter and darker sides from blending together in his other areas of the painting. Much of his exploration and thinking went into the narrative and design of the different components of his world, which he excelled at. However, when it came to depicting these concepts visually, he encountered difficulty with differentiating between objects. His storytelling about the painting helped clarify his artistic intent, and he recognized and articulated that the overwhelming amount of different colors contributed to a sense of visual confusion and lack of clarity.
Student 3 changed his idea halfway through creating his painting. He completely started over and created most of this painting in one class period. This is why he mentions that he "sort of rushed" and was unhappy with his lack of details. For having started over, he managed to do a remarkable job of demonstrating understanding of foreground, middle ground, background, color mixing, and light and shadow. He correctly identifies the lightning as the middle ground, which he says is his favorite part. He exhibited a unique and creative approach to this criteria by showing a cross section of the underwater house, while simultaneously showing the surface of the water to show distance. This effect would not have been successful without the specific ending point of the lightning. Because it is in the middle, it implies that there is receding water above it and closer water surface below it.
Student 4 did an exceptional job of taking the approach shown in the time lapse video example from Day 4. She thoroughly coated the entire surface of the canvas with the sunrise colors in the background before even starting to create any foreground or middle ground. This enabled her to paint directly on this surface once it had dried between classes, so she didn't have to paint the sky around her mountains or sun. Her trees overlap the mountains, and as objects recede into the distance, they are situated higher on the page and are smaller in scale. She was also able to point out that the lighter side of the mountains was where the sun was hitting them, and the darker side was the side that was farther away from the light source. This demonstrated a solid grasp on how three-dimensional objects reflect light, and how to create the illusion of this phenomenon on a two-dimensional surface.
Student 4 did an exceptional job of taking the approach shown in the time lapse video example from Day 4. She thoroughly coated the entire surface of the canvas with the sunrise colors in the background before even starting to create any foreground or middle ground. This enabled her to paint directly on this surface once it had dried between classes, so she didn't have to paint the sky around her mountains or sun. Her trees overlap the mountains, and as objects recede into the distance, they are situated higher on the page and are smaller in scale. She was also able to point out that the lighter side of the mountains was where the sun was hitting them, and the darker side was the side that was farther away from the light source. This demonstrated a solid grasp on how three-dimensional objects reflect light, and how to create the illusion of this phenomenon on a two-dimensional surface.
Student 5 spent a very long time on the reflection worksheet afterwards, and showed a strong sense of artistic self-awareness in her writing and her verbal description. She continually pushed herself to create new solutions, such as reflections on the top of the water. Furthermore, she retained specific vocabulary such as "cast shadow" which we briefly mentioned but did not require the students to retain. Her subtle difference between the water and the sky, in which she "used different types of blues and whites," came from her thorough exploration of color mixing. She showed in her sketchbook in a previous lesson that the same two colors could create many different variations depending on what ratio of each was used. Overall, her attention to detail and persistence led to a thoroughly thought-out painting that reflected deep understanding.
It was pretty funny how this student called the horizon line the "line of scrimmage"! However, he did grasp the concept fairly well, despite his confusion about vocabulary. Although his painting technique was somewhat messy and it was hard to distinguish what was going on in some areas, such as the zombies, his verbal explanations throughout the project showed that he understood what he was trying to accomplish. This becomes clear in the interview when he describes his light and shadow. The areas that are near to the light are glowing with reflected yellow, and the farther areas are in shadow, including the left side of the building that he points out. This is especially true in a nighttime setting; his bold exploration of this tricky lighting situation was fairly accurate and conveyed his intent well.