The Dot (K and 1st)

Because I'm very linear myself as an artist, it's tricky for me sometimes to break free of lines and take students on a more abstract journey. I'm trying though! This project inspired by Peter H. Reynolds' The Dot was quite a departure for me, and I loved it. The kids really enjoyed it, too, because there absolutely was NO wrong way to do this. (Not that there's ever a wrong way to make art, but kids are tough on themselves, even the little ones.) It was wonderful to be able to help them turn a "mistake" into a beautiful part of their art. (Don't like that red dot? Add yellow! Make it bigger! Outline it with purple! Endless possibilities!)

I read The Dot to  students, then gave them oil pastels and a piece of drawing paper and turned them loose. The only direction I gave them was to fill their paper with dots...big ones, small ones...dots everywhere! The next week we painted. Again, anything went, though I did keep an eye out for muddy colors. As I always do when I paint from the cart, I had a parent volunteer, so an extra pair of adult eyes watching out for over-saturated paper or too-thick paint was very very helpful.

This was an excellent experiment in color and pure abstraction, and I adore the results. Here are a few more of our dots!

Creativity Campaign!

Since this is my first year with all of my students (new school), my goal with every grade has been to encourage creativity and risk-taking. I'm on a serious crusade to get my young artists to loosen up and to delete the word "perfect" from their art vocabulary.

At the start of the school year, I challenged my 6th grade students to create a work of art incorporating this quote from cartoonist Scott Adams: "Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep." We looked at various examples of designs that combine text and imagery, and then I set them loose. The motivation? One work of art would be chosen to be immortalized on posters and in other media promoting the visual art program at our school all year. I got some great entries, but the strongest, in my opinion, was this one: simple, well-designed, eye-catching, and it very successfully combines technique and text to illustrate the quote. (And everything was spelled correctly!)

Click to enlarge

Here's the poster I had printed up, which is now plastered all over the school. (LOVE Vistaprint!)

The students have really taken ownership of the program and are truly feeling like artists. I still have my non-risk-takers, but we're working on it. I plan to do this every year with a different focus. I'd love to have a very large collection of posters when I retire! :)