Quiet,tough-looking Latino student, grade 12. I took an idea off of here
about op-art, where the students are studying Victor Valesy. They are to
make a line drawing of intersecting planes and illusionistic forms on a big
flat piece of bristol. Before they begin the line drawing, they take 3
circular patterns and arrange them on the board surface in a strong
compositional manner, trace them, and leave them blank. Basically, they are
painting the shapes/forms on the flat surface around the circles out of
acrylic paint (one color, many tints/tones) Then, they will be cutting out
slightly larger cirlces, also out of oak tag, and using sharpies to design a
black-and-white op art pattern. This circle will be slotted and bent to
make a conical form, which we will then attatch to the original board in the
blank circles. SO we are not only making an illusion on the flat 2d
surface, but we will actually have a 3d surface out of 2d media with 3d
illusions on them! Somehow, these kids understood what I was trying to do,
and they are doing a nice job with it so far. Anyway, back to the point,
this kids sitting there, and he says, "Mister, I'm *&*%# bored with this".
I obviously ignored him for a bit, let him sit there, then brought over a
sample Valesey work and had him try and figure out which way the boxes were
going. 5 minutes of interested conversation later, he was back on task and
really was motivated!
