Anoka High School – Kevan Nitzberg | Art Teacher – 12 Hours
This week I concentrated on my residency at Anoka High School with Kevan Nitzberg. At the beginning of the week I presented my lesson to his first hour Drawing 1 class. The lesson consisted of 'ideating' their emotive self-portraits. First, I presented a slideshow that displayed examples of famous artists and their self-portraits. We discussed the emotions the artists were portraying and some stories behind the artwork. At the end of the discussion I explained the assignment. They were to take an 18” x 24” sheet of paper and divide it in four sections. In each section they would sketch a self-portrait portraying different emotions in a variety of media. The students worked for the entire class period., though many students did not finish by the time the class ended. The sketches were handed in through the next couple of days.
I believe the students learned that the ideation process to a successful piece of art takes time and patience. They also learned to experiment with many possibilities before coming to a final conclusion.
Some of the students thought the lesson was optional and did not finish the project and continued to work on homework that they currently had due for the class. This could of been prevented by my being more clear about the directions, expectations and the final goal to the project. Overall the students ideated through many emotions and are ready to start thinking about their emotive self-portrait assignment for Kevan’s class.
I was not able to take pictures of the project at this time, but will have followup pictures on my next Journal.