Project/Unit description/Expedition: The importance of a sketchbook is to allow creative exploration and teaching the students how to come up with their own ideas and practice ideation. By practicing how to brainstorm, the students will have more ideas to choose from and continue to brainstorm throughout the semester. In today’s experience, students learned how to brainstorm and organize their ideas so that they can complete the front covers of their sketchbook.
Essential Understanding:
Artists use critical thinking and organizational techniques to create a framework from which to begin creating artwork.
Problem pose is used to decide which of these initial ideas can be carried out with the available tools.
Artists are free to expand on this resolution and formulate new ideas that enhance their artwork.
Inquiry/Learning target: After brainstorming potential topics, students will be able to create ideas in their notebook with confidence, shown by the creation of drawings.
Key Concepts:
Artists use sketchbooks to record, expand, and build off of ideas.
Collaborative learning used to identify subject matter in art.
Respect for peers and studio materials continued to be practiced.
Skills: brainstorming, collaboration, expression, ideation, practice of Art Studio Agreements
In this class, the purpose of the lesson was to introduce us as artists, and the importance of sketchbooks. They are great tools for students to practice ideation. As they brainstorm, they will have more ideas to choose from and continue to revisit ideas throughout the rest of the semester. In the photos above, there are student examples of drawings. Students reflected on what they were passionate about and freely expressed why and what they chose to draw.
Some drawings were intentional, and the student had a plan right at the beginning while others made a line, then built off that. When us, teachers, asked what they were drawing, it was interesting to hear stories, flourishing ideas, and personalities come to life. Sketchbooks are used in many ways and that is what the students discovered. There is no right or wrong way while expressing ideas in sketchbooks. Students connected our personal artwork to our passions and what we enjoy so that they could connect their own interests to art.
A main theme that we saw throughout the class was the expression of personal values, interests, and important figures in their lives. The student connected the learning target to their creation of sketchbook drawings. For example, a student started to draw a landscape full of flowers, then began to add other elements. Throughout the class, we saw that she kept brainstorming and stretching her ideas into more. By the end of the class, she was eager to showcase what she drew and why. Above, her drawing includes a storm with butterflies and flowers.