>
> Bunki,
>
> Your website of student work is incredible! You have some very talented
> students! Where do you get your ideas for your lessons?
>
> Carissa Dickerson
>
> Where do you get your ideas for your lessons?
I think this a very interesting idea to pursue for all of us.
I am a magazine addict. I am always gleaning magazines for visual
inspiration. Sometimes it's just a little thing that causes me to select
something to go into my notebook of ideas to pursue. It can be a technique,
a theme, sometimes a title.
I rarely get ideas from "textbooks."
I am not one at all to use the idea of do something "in the style of" at
least not without some kind of personal context.
I have technique lessons that are very structured but most of my teaching is
about applying that technique to a persoanltheme.
I try to impress on my students that ideas are not "manna from heaven" that
ideas are a compellation of recorded impressions and application of visual
thought to those impressions.
one of my recent inspirations--
I saw a drawing in a college catalogue
it was a gridded self portrait, slightly distorted with a rectangle that
contained some cryptic markings. My lesson became: draw your face from
observation. Include all details and values. Grid you drawing, then create a
distorted grid for transfer. Combine your face with a geometric shape and
include in that shape symbolic representations of who you are. I have my
students keep in their sketchbooks collections of images and words that have
some kind of personal connection for them. These are the things they use to
create symbolic images and markings. I am in the middle of this lesson now
and each result is unique.
I say this with trepidation
trust your own creative instincts. It's easy to follow the lessons in the
books and to take someone else's successful lesson and use it in a pinch.
But, we are art teachers, and part of our obligation is to teach our
students to be observers. To translate what is and has been to their
personal experience. That's what is so great about Sharon's masks. Each
used the lesson to pursue a personal expression.
I think what makes this list so valuable is that we are exposed to great art
teachers who see some kind of vision for lessons and we pick and choose just
how we will apply that process to own lesson making.
So where do you get your ideas from?
Patty
Maybe over the holidays when we are not so stressed we can pursue this idea
of where ideas come from
I would look forward to that exchange
