Unit 1: Identity
Artist: Chuck Close
Self-Portraiture: Crayon
Artist: William Wegman
Artful Personifications: Mixed Media
Unit 1: Identity Reflection
The first unit that we completed for this course focused on the big idea of Identity. I really enjoyed that Identity was the first unit because I believe it helped me to find myself in the first couple art assignments before we really dove in to other art pieces. Through these two pieces I was able to explore myself as an artist and really see what I was capable of doing. In the first piece, we were given the task of exploring the personalities of different disney characters to find one that we most closely related to. In my first piece I focused on Pocahontas, her and I both have strong personalities that some times lead us into trouble. I placed Pocahontas on the right side of the page so she would be looking off into the distance and I deliberately placed Kocoum to the left, with his arrow pointed at her back to show that her choices landed her in opposition with her family. Though there are only two pieces that I used for this picture I spent a great deal of time experimenting with the placement of the two to create the story that I wanted my picture to tell (200, p.92). I felt that this is what Bang was explaining when working with the placement of the elements in Little Red Riding Hood's story. In my second piece, I focused on the character Alice, from Alice in Wonderland. I really enjoyed portraying her as a gentle individual using the dog head, and following that up with the skunk tail to describe how quickly her personality can change.
I really enjoyed working on these two art pieces, however I found the second one to be much more challenging than the first. I think that the Chuck Close art would be a reasonable piece to do with students grades 2-5. I think that they are more than capable of utilizing the water color-pencils and I think they would really enjoy finding the disney character that they most closely relate to. The only challenge I see with this project is the students of this generation not knowing the disney characters I commonly think of. The second art piece was more challenging for me. I found it overwhelming to try and find all of the pieces I wanted to bring together out of the magazines. I may have personally been too worried about the piece than I should have, and that children may not over-think the piece the way that I did. I think that this would be an awesome piece to intergrade into another subject area such as social studies and have the students depict their interpretation/feelings toward a specific time period or event in history. I felt that this could help to show students that problems/prompts can have multiple solutions and that people interpret things differently from one another (Eisner, 2002). This would probably be a project only students grades 4 and 5 could complete and I would not offer exact-o knives as a cutting object.
Bang, M. (2000). Picture this: How pictures work. (p. 92). San Francisco: Chronicle Books LLC.
Eisner, E.W. (2002). The arts and creation of mind. New Haven: Yale University.
I really enjoyed working on these two art pieces, however I found the second one to be much more challenging than the first. I think that the Chuck Close art would be a reasonable piece to do with students grades 2-5. I think that they are more than capable of utilizing the water color-pencils and I think they would really enjoy finding the disney character that they most closely relate to. The only challenge I see with this project is the students of this generation not knowing the disney characters I commonly think of. The second art piece was more challenging for me. I found it overwhelming to try and find all of the pieces I wanted to bring together out of the magazines. I may have personally been too worried about the piece than I should have, and that children may not over-think the piece the way that I did. I think that this would be an awesome piece to intergrade into another subject area such as social studies and have the students depict their interpretation/feelings toward a specific time period or event in history. I felt that this could help to show students that problems/prompts can have multiple solutions and that people interpret things differently from one another (Eisner, 2002). This would probably be a project only students grades 4 and 5 could complete and I would not offer exact-o knives as a cutting object.
Bang, M. (2000). Picture this: How pictures work. (p. 92). San Francisco: Chronicle Books LLC.
Eisner, E.W. (2002). The arts and creation of mind. New Haven: Yale University.