Using Templates to Support in Visual Art - AS91914

 When you are starting a new page in a sketchbook, there is nothing worse than sitting looking at a blank piece of paper. 

To help with this, I made the students some templates on paper to work on their two artist models. I photocopied the templates onto wet strength cartridge paper we i knew we were going to be painting and printing and doing collage work as part of the media experiments.

This is the template for the Henri Rousseau work - link to document

Here is the student work produced from using this template. The students cut out the media experiments and presented them into their sketchbooks.

This is the Margaret Aull template that we used. I put instructions for different media to be used on this one. Link to the document

Here is the student work produced from using this template. The students cut out the media experiments and presented them into their sketchbooks.

We are now onto thinking about our own work and we are using the work from AS91912 - link to blog post. and the influence of one of the artist models that we have looked at.

 I do not want the students to be put off by suddenly having a big blank piece of paper staring at them so I have made a template for them for this step too - link to document

This presentation is from my sketchbook and shows how we can cut up this template to arrange into our sketchbooks the same as before. I am really enjoying seeing how individual the students are making their sketchbooks with how they are laying them out. I am looking forward to seeing their ideas about their own piece of work and reading their notes about what their ideas are about.

Reading in Visual Art - Understanding the Artists Interpretation

 Our second artist model in Year 11 Visual Art this year is Margaret Aull. We are doing a similar process to when we looked at Henri Rousseau earlier in the year - blog post here - where I am getting the students to fill in a worksheet using a variety of media looking at the artists' work. The reading for the first artist model was an activity practising scanning and predicting - blog post here

The planning for the artist model work is on the class website - Henri Rousseau - Margaret Aull

The reading for Margaret Aull was of a very different style. We were reading her written piece that goes along with her painting " Fiji, Ever Fiji". This work, both the writing and the painting, was Margaret Aull's response to the coup and violence that was happening in Fiji at the time.

The first thing that we did as a class was to watch a YouTube video of the trouble and we had a class discussion about what a coup is and what the violence was about.

I gave the students a big version of the painting and a photocopy of the artist's words. Mr Milford, our literacy specialist, had taken a copy of the work away with him to work on a strategy for the students to understand what was being said. Here are his planning notes.

The students read through the work at the same time as I was reading it out to them - Link to document

We had the students highlight everywhere there was a "noun group" so they could highlight and see where these things were and we could talk about what each one meant. They then highlighted all the action words / verbs in green so they could relate those to what as being said.

We were referring back to the large poster that i have on my classroom wall that has all of these elements highlighted. Link to poster here.

What we are doing with this work now is putting it into our sketchbooks with our media experiments of Margaret Aull work. We had already done a bigger copy when we were practising mixing colours  - blog post here, so we are taking a double page up in our sketchbooks to be able to fit everything in, especially the large piece of written work.

With my example that I always make for the students, I didnt like the clean page so I put painted sections on it before sticking the work down and then splattered paint across everything afterwards.

Here is a picture of Mr Milford working with the students, going over the written work, while I highlighted the words on the screen as we went over them.

I found this a much harder reading activity to do with the students as it was dealing with thoughts and feelings and reactions to events where the normal reading that I do with my students is around facts - materials and processes, dates of things happening etc.

Using AI in Design

 AI is a tool that can be used in design very easily. I had my Year 11 Design and Visual Communication class use Adobe Express for this purpose.

We used the text to image tool to generate some design ideas. I wanted the students to experience using AI this way as we always have trouble trying to draw their ideas in 3D. It is not the 3D drawing that is the problem, as I can help them with those skills, it is the visualising the idea in their head and then trying to describe to me what they want when I am trying to help them, that is the problem. I usually get round this by getting the students to quickly make a model of their idea with plasticine so we can both see it. AI seemed like an interesting way to try to do this. 

The class are designing seating and have two design influences. One is from looking at an architects work and one is from researching images from Matariki. 

First of all we put in a description of what we wanted. Here, I put in a garden chair for four people that is made from wood. It came up with a design which was ok but quite boring and generic.

Next, we used the style box to upload an image from one of the design influences we have been looking at. I used an image of a silver fern as this came from researching images to do with Tupuārangi.

This came up with a much more interesting set of designs. You can definitely see the influence of the silver fern here.

The one that I chose to use is below here. I used the button on Adobe Express that removes the background so that I could just focus on the image of the seat.

As a class, we have had a conversation about how we then use these designs we are generating using AI. They can not just stick this print out into their sketch books and say it is their design. We discussed the fact that although there is not a person involved that drew this who they would be taking it from, it is still not the students own work so they can't say that it is.

What we are going to do with these generated images is use them as starting points for our own drawings. They are a great visual aid as you can see the design in 3D, see how the light hits it and how that light causes shadows and how the material looks. Basically all the things that are assessed.

This is my drawing using the AI design as a starting point. I added more spirals to reference the silver fern more and I changed the base the way I have to reference my architect, who is Frank Lloyd Wright. I wanted to specifically reference the Guggenheim Museum. You can see that I used the AI image as a starting point but the drawing is still my own work and my own design.

We are currently adding to the design page with details of the references that we have used and views that show scale. We will finish this work with research on the properties of the chosen materials. (I hope I've left enough room for those notes!!)