teachers' turn.

On Wednesday the art department presented our annual workshops for our site classroom teachers. Our goal is to make it fun and educational.  It's a great opportunity to get our teachers more comfortable with incorporating visual art into their grade level curriculum. It also provides them a chance to try something they do not have experience with. Our site teachers are such great sports with this. They are enthusiastic and willing to jump in and try something new.

We met everyone in the auditorium to give them an overview of what the art team has been working on (assessments, resource material and extension activities for art lessons, supplemental art report card), and then broke out into 3 different hands on workshops.

Ms. Vance did tunnel books, Ms. Pothier did clay vessels, and I did an implied motion stencil project.

I used a powerpoint to introduce my group to the variety of ways an artist may create motion in art.

Repetition of shape or line
use of direction line
repetition of shape with a change in value
use of multiple frames
body or object position

We looked at examples of motion from a range of materials and styles

Chris Haughton- A Bit Lost

Banksy

Matte Stephens

Giacomo Balla

Scott McCloud- Understanding Comics

Bill Watterson

Chuck Jones

After discussing these examples I introduced how one can use a stencil in an artwork to create motion or to add background elements in an image. A stencil makes it easy to repeat an element several times and then you can incorporate the other motion techniques as well.

When applying their stencils, teachers could use oil pastels, tempera paint, or spray paint. I stated that in order to show they were proficient in creating motion the teachers must use at least 2 different methods to do so.

The project was more open than other workshop projects I have done, so there was an interesting range of images at the end of the lesson.

Thanks goes out to all the teachers who participated in these workshops. We are looking forward to seeing these techniques and elements incorporated into upcoming lessons. No pressure;)