One of my goals in teaching art is to encourage students to take time. Especially my oldest students. This often includes a step by step approach, asking students to focus on one task per day and interact with artwork over 3 or more class periods. Students often look forward to next steps and see their work differently after a break from it.
These 5th grade 'Stand-out Shells' are no exception. Students spent upwards of 5 classes: first sketching, then outlining and planning, and finally painting in tints and shades, in the loose style of African American artist Aaron Douglass (1899-1979). The big idea was for students to purposefully use a strong design + color to create a point of EMPHASIS---a place where the viewer's eye goes first.
Douglas is a great artist with which to begin 5th grade because he created multiple points of EMPHASIS in his most famous works, by purposefully organizing lines, shapes, colors, textures, and/or forms. Creating emphasis is one way artists make work look good, and this is the unifying design theme for fifth graders at VLM.
Image by Aaron Douglas
(Student Images top to bottom: Catherine, Rowan, Gigi, Karen, Ashontii)
CAN YOU FIND THE POINTS OF EMPHASIS IN EACH STUDENT'S WORK?
Note to VLM 5th grade families: I keep work for the first half of year for fifth graders in preparation for out Final fifth grade art-show in the spring. Students will eventually bring all work home!
