When first transitioning the Art and Design curriculum at my school towards a more student-centered and choice-based approach, I struggled with how to best approach teaching media-specific methods that didn't take too much time away from students getting to work on their own creations.

I recently wrote an article for SchoolArts Magazine about how using stations around the room, with short introduction of materials and timed sessions can help students experience each media before deciding whether or not they would like to use it for their work. In the article, I highlight a series of 2D media that students used like watercolor, collage, and ink.

This past week, I tried it with printmaking.

In the one-day demo, students had the opportunity to try collagraphs, block printing, dry point (with cereal boxes), monoprints (with Gelli Arts printing plates), and silk screens (using Mayco Designer silkscreens). During the five minute sessions at each station, students worked in teams of 3 to create at least one usable print. This was a great way to promote experimentation and help with understanding as they walked each other through the process (using the introduction cards as a guide). 

During the rotations, students also took notes in their sketchbooks about how each print method worked, the materials needed to accomplish the effect, and whether or not they liked doing it. Once done, students had a chance to reflect on the process as a whole group and discuss which prints worked and which didn't and why that was. 

The next day, students spent 10 minutes transforming their prints into a collaborative collage before uploading it to Artsonia. In addition to deconstructing and reassembling their prints in this collaborative effort, students added other collage elements to complete their creations. Because they were working in groups of three, students had one student be the scissor-handler, one worked the glue, and one acted as a director for the composition.

My goal is to give students the understanding and skills needed to make informed choices about what they want to create. Although some students may never use printmaking again outside of this hands-on demonstration, I know that they and the ones who immediately changed their project idea as a result of this experience benefit from the chance to manipulate media and make informed choices based on what they hope for their own work.

Here are some examples from the collaboration:

We learn best by doing. 

When teaching techniques, it is great to do demonstrations and show students how to use materials and the different things they can do. I have found it is best, however, if I can engage them in an activity that they do and then can decide if they would like to adapt independently to another situation. 

That is what mini-challenges, like this line and watercolor portrait, is all about in my classroom. 

To start, students take a set of notes that define line, various line directions (and we even do a little dance for this part), and then put those lines into action through a series of portraits.

In their sketchbooks, they create a bilateral continuous contour line portrait, a dominant hand-directed contour line portrait, and a non-dominant hand-directed contour line portrait using various classmates from around the room as subjects that switched for each of the drawings.

After these drawings are complete, students were given a 6x9 inch sheet of watercolor and a white oil pastel to translate their sketches onto, creating a composition on the page with the lines.

The following day, students used their watercolor paper with the oil pastel drawings on them to experiment with a variety of watercolor painting techniques. We went over wet on wet, wet on dry, salt, sponge, resist, and a couple of ways you can use the air from your mouth to get a splatter effect on the page. 

Once the watercolors were dry, students went back in with sharpie and made choices about where to add emphasis. This was a fun way to talk about materials, abstraction, and how artists can adapt ideas for future projects. 

I know students will use these concepts in different ways throughout the term and I look forward to seeing their results. 

Getting to know students is the most important thing when starting out the school year. Knowing their interests can be key to developing classroom culture and helping students when they are stuck on a design challenge and not sure where to go with it.

One way to draw out those ideas visually is through a design challenge that also helps decorate the front of student portfolios: The Personal Logo Challenge. In this challenge, students are asked to create their own logo based on who they are. 

To start out student are asked to make a list of four to five of their favorite things in their sketchbook and then draw a symbol or sketch that represents what they wrote.

We then look at a variety of logos. From fast-food to clothing companies and cars, we look at a wide variety of logos and examine how color, font, and overall composition can help offer the viewer ideas and insight about what the company sells or what core values the company is trying to portray. After looking at large company logos, we then turn to logos associated with specific people and compare the way they look. 

After that, students are asked to review their lists and symbols from earlier and find ways they might be able to combine ideas, use select font styles, or other visual cues to create potential sketches of their logo. 

Once they have three sketches of possible designs, they select one to apply to their portfolio. After sketching it out on their portfolio they are asked to use colored pencil and/or marker to complete their work. 

This opening project is a great way for me to get to know my students better and it also helps me teach concepts about composition as well as colored pencil and marker techniques. 

For many years now, I have opened the school year with the story "The Dot," by Peter H. Reynolds. It is an inspirational story that so many young (and old) artists can relate to when trying to overcome self-doubt while making art.  It is something I need reminding of, too, in my own work and when promoting my students to push themselves more than they think they can go. 

​This year, I to jump into the story of "The Dot" by having students use Batik to dye scarves. This was a risk, as I have not done this with students in this way before, but it was well worth it. You can hear more about the process in the video below (and the images, too):

To start, we watched the story as a class and had a group discussion about the meaning of the project. This was a great way to get everyone's defenses down about being creative and approaching our own dot activity.

To start, students received their materials as pairs. As pairs, students used dowels, cups, and other circular objects to apply the resist material to their scarves (the scarves were folded in half so they would end up being symmetrical). 

After a day of drying, students selected three colors to use for dying their scarves. They used bamboo brushes to apply the dye to the work. This was done until the scarves were filled with color.

After a day of letting the dye set, students rinsed out the resist in a series of three buckets. I released students by table to do this. Once dry, we were able to marvel at the beauty of the white dotted marks littering the gradations of color dyed into the material. 

I hope everyone had an awesome Dot Day! I am very excited that these scarves are now going to be for sale during Parent Teacher Conferences and the BCFAB craft fair to benefit our Art and STEM program. 

​If you are interested in learning more, please ask! 

For this week's share, take a moment and be amazed with the collaborative powers of the Byron Center Public School Visual art and Design program. We are so excited to showcase the skills and hard work of our students in our entry for the Youth Collaboration Award at ArtPrize10. This piece is on view in the Downtown Market's second floor through ArtPrize in hopes we might win the $2500 grant for our program! 

​This project was inspired by a student work:

From this, we brainstormed ideas on how we could work together and create a piece that represents our school community. You can listen to more about the work in the video I made below: 

It is a new school year, and with new year anything comes resolutions and aspirational goals that may or may not be met. One goal I have for this school year is to freshen up this space and reorganize it. Since 2011, I have been blogging here. It has taken a few different forms over the years and we are able to try something new once again. Instead of the weekly posts that have been going on for the last few years, I am going to start posting by assignment. This will mean less posts, but it will also mean more complete thoughts and processes on what we are creating from the BCWMS Visual Art and Design classroom. 

For the first posts in this new endeavor, I am sharing something I tried for the first time during the first week of school: Photoshop! I was nervous going into it because many of my 7th graders have not used this program, let alone a MacBook before, so I knew it was going to be a challenge. I decided to do it anyway, because I have tried things like clay on the first day of school without missing a beat, so I thought this could be like that, right? Well, not exactly. 

It was interesting to see how students were able to try something new, fail, try again, struggle, ask for help from each other, and finally get where they needed to go in the end. I can think of a lot of things I will do differently when I get this chance again next semester - some of which I put into place mid-way through this creation. 

I am very fortunate to have a cart of MacBook Airs with Photoshop on them in my classroom. I assign students a number on the first day of school and that is how they know which computer to check out as well as where to store their Chromebooks when we are painting and their 3D work on a different rack in the room. Giving students a number is a great way to help keep things organized when you may be dealing with a set number of materials or devices to create. 

​Once they got onto the computers, they went to Schoology where I posted the video tutorial for this project as well as the base of their image: the can! Because I believe sharing is caring, here are those resources for you if you would like to use them in your classroom, too: 

Besides the fact that my last name is Campbell and I have a certain fondness towards Andy Warhol's work because of that, it was also important to me that students started the year thinking about what impact art can have in their lives and what it empowers them to do. In addition to using the Warhol imagery of the soup can, we also mimicked his pop-art style portraits by using the stamp filter in Photoshop. 

As you will hear in the video, I talk about class colors. It is another trick I have to help me keep organized. By having things numbered and color coded, it saves students and me time when something goes missing or needs to be put away. 

Reading the goals of my students helped me focus on what they see in the power of art. You can view more on our Artsonia class gallery. 

I hope this was a helpful post and that you will keep coming back to check out the other creations we share as we work through the year. 

Good luck to all of the hard-working, paint-slinging, photoshopping, clay squishing, material dispensing Visual Art and Design teachers out there! This year is going to be amazing because of your work and efforts in sharing your love of art and design with others! Thank you for your work and I look forward to sharing more of ours!