Art Smart!: Intelligent, creative fun for all ages

adults!

LESSONS 1–4

LESSON 1: YOUR NAME AS FINE ART

Remember that you do not have to complete the lessons in any particular order – you will learn something different from each one! A vocabulary word is listed first and an artist for study next. Find as many images as you can by this artist and take your time deciding what things you like about the works. After much work and study, you will find your own particular style. Have fun!!

Fine Art: Something created for its own sake, whether or not it can be used for a practical purpose. Fine art also can make you think about things in a different way because it is unusual and grabs your attention.

Use cardstock, construction paper or cardboard and colorful paints, pencils or crayons. If you want to add extra dazzle, use glue and glitter or sequins.

Jasper Johns, who often used partially obscured words and numbers in his paintings, may inspire you to be especially creative with letters. False Start, created by Johns in 1959, is a fun example since the names of the colors are wrong. For example, the word GRAY is painted in red letters on a patch of yellow!

Your name is important because YOU are important! There is no one exactly like you and no one who can create art exactly as you do. So be proud of who you are and what you can do if you work hard, and jump into creating a piece of fine art using your name.

Begin by using a pencil to write your first name, or the name you like to be called, in large bubble letters across the entire page. Think about how you want to fill the space around the letters. Do you want colors from the background to flow into some of the letters as Jasper Johns did with his numbers? Do you want to plant your name in a garden of flowers? Or put the letters of your name on the side of a truck?

This is your chance to paint or draw things that interest you in colors you love. Take care to outline the letters in a contrasting color if you are painting over parts of them. Finally, use small dots of glue and take your time adding one sequin at a time and sprinkles of glitter for a bit of sparkle.

When the entire page is covered with your creative work, check to see that your name can still be read — if so you’ve completed an important piece of fine art! Next try asking a friend or family member what they like and what colors are their favorites and use the answers to create a name sign for them.

Lesson 1: Notes for Teachers

I have been told many times that I tend to oversimplify. Because I have supreme confidence in the inherent creativity of all people of all ages, I am prone to explain things by saying, Just do it the best way you can, however you want to do it…exactly for the end result you desire…. Thus I am adding a few teacher notes to the back side of each lesson. And, please, feel free to email me or any of us at Art for the Nations with any questions or to give input!

This lesson, the Name Project, may not seem to be such a big deal to American kids but please remind them to take their time because they, as individuals, are unique and their name is a very important symbol of who they are!

Feel free to go on the web site – www.artforthenations.org – to show students some of the name signs children all over the world have diligently and joyfully created. This project was the first one I used in Juarez, Mexico, sitting on a dirt road in a very impoverished part of town while the rest of our team built a tiny house. Children spent hours completing their signs which were proudly taped to the walls of a small community church. Another team returned to this church 12 years later and reported that most of the names still were taped proudly to the adobe walls. I cried.

Tips:

•Ask that each artist outline the beginnings of their design in pencil and provide erasers for sloppily or hurriedly executed name signs.

•Encourage all to personalize their sign with favorite colors and images of beloved things. Challenge them to fill the paper!

Copyright 2018 Grace Creations – ART SMART! by Lisa Ambler

LESSON 2: TRACING TO TRAIN YOUR BRAIN

Tracing: A way to copy an image of another work of art or a photograph by placing a thin sheet of paper over the original and following its contours with a pencil is tracing. You can also trace the shape of an object, like the bottom of a drinking glass or your own hand or foot, by placing the object on a piece of paper and following its shape. Many artists use their fingers to trace a shape in the air as they are looking at it to practice that form before beginning to draw or paint.

Use a sheet of tracing paper, or other very thin paper, as well as several pages of white paper and a pencil. If possible study art with images of hands as well as a copy of Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam.

A portion of the enormous fresco on the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling by the Italian artist Michelangelo Buonarroti contains perhaps the most well-known painting of hands in the world. This image shows the near-touching hands of God and Adam in exquisite, and somehow tender, detail.

There are so many ways to train your artistic brain and tracing is one of them! What some people think of as cheating or something that no real artist would do is actually the perfect way to teach yourself the exact details of a shape. As your hand and your pencil follow the outline of whatever you are tracing, your brain is remembering the path you’ve followed.

First, before tracing anything, quickly draw a hand on a piece of scratch paper. Now set that drawing aside. Next take a piece of thin tracing paper and lay it on top of a detailed sketch of a hand or trace the outlines of your own hand (the one you’re not drawing with) and repeat this several times. Compare your first hand drawing with the traced outlines and notice the differences.

Finally, on a piece of white or colored paper, create a drawing of many hands to show what you’ve learned. Paint each hand a different color or make some of the hands a solid color and some patterned. Your hand-shapes can even overlap to create a pattern of their own. Hands are one of the hardest things to draw so continue to trace your own, or images of hands by other artists and don’t feel bad – you’re tracing to train your brain!

Lesson 2: Notes for Teachers

Definitely use your resources to reproduce the hands in Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam for older students. After they have traced the outlines of each finger and wrist, point out that the changes in flesh tones are an important technique Michelangelo used to make these hands look realistic. Discuss how this shading could be done without the use of color.

Young artists most probably will be content tracing the outline of their own hands or the hands of those sitting next to them. Tracing paper is not necessary for this activity. It can also be fun to provide colored sheets of paper to trace their hands upon then cut out and glue on a white paper. You can even encourage them to draw an old-fashioned clothesline on which to hang their mitten shapes and then decorate each with patterns.

Tips:

•You may have to assist in the initial efforts of tracing by taping the papers down to the tables so they don’t move around and by offering your hand to be traced.

•Since everyone learns in very different ways, you can also place all sorts of gloves and mittens out to be examined. The simple act of looking and touching will help some students simplify the shape of a human hand in their minds.

•For young students especially, it can be fun to look at and trace images of hands in cartoons and children’s books.

Copyright 2018 Grace Creations – ART SMART! by Lisa Ambler

LESSON 3: A COLORFUL MOOD

Mood: How a person feels at a particular time. Mood can also refer to the feelings inspired by a place, a certain time of day, a kind of weather, an object or a work of art.

Use watercolor paper or cardboard, a pencil, acrylic or watercolor paints, glue and, especially for younger students, cotton balls that have been pulled apart into tiny wisps.

J.M.W. Turner’s dramatic land and seascapes are perfect inspiration. Some of the places in his paintings look like a bright and cheerful location for having a picnic; some, especially his seascapes with dark waves, are frightening.

How do you feel on a rainy day? Happy and energetic? Or does rain and a dark sky make you slow and sleepy? Always, before you paint anything you should think about the colors you’re going to use and the impression you want to give with your artwork. Careful color choices help you, as an artist, say exactly what you want to say. Are you feeling blue? Or happy as a sunny day? Dark or dull colors might set a serious mood; usually, yellow looks cheerful.

Today we’re going to paint a landscape that inspires certain feelings so choose a mood! Then, using a pencil sketch mountains or trees near the bottom of your paper and draw clouds in the sky.

If your painting is going to be somber or sad, use watered down black to paint shadows on the cloud bottoms. Glue tiny wisps of cotton near the top of these clouds, adding gray paint over the white puffs. The sky around your storm clouds should be gray with maybe a touch of blue and the trees or mountains would look muted since they are in shadow.

If this is a happy setting, the sky is a bright, pure blue and your clouds will have few shadows so you can cover their shapes with white cotton. Since the sun is shining, all of the things underneath these clouds may be painted in brilliant colors.

Finally, show your painting to someone else and ask if they’d rather have a picnic there or stay inside!

Lesson 3: Notes for Teachers

You may want to prepare a short personal note to be given to the parents of each student at the end of this lesson addressing the value of art as communication and as therapy. For example, if a student has painted a sad picture today, it could be they truly are sad, or are working through something difficult that happened earlier (or it could be just that they love blue and gray!). Whatever the picture means to each artist, it is a great way to begin a conversation about their actual mood. And, perhaps most importantly, the act of creating is therapeutic in itself!

Tips:

•The easiest way to convey this idea that a work of art can inspire a specific mood is to find paintings that demonstrate happiness and sadness to you. Many of Turner’s paintings can seem somber when compared to Van Gogh’s sunny landscapes.

•Give each student an art book and two small scraps of paper to use as markers. Ask them to take their time looking through the pages to find one painting they think of as joyful and one that is sadder. Let each artist talk about their choices, reminding the class that there are no right or wrong answers in art since everyone sees things differently.

•Possible note to parents:

Dearest Parents,

Today we talked about expressing a certain mood within a landscape. Ask your artist what their scene portrays and how they would feel about going there if it were a real place. Then, of course, you can ask how their day went and if they feel it influenced what they painted!

Copyright 2018 Grace Creations – ART SMART! by Lisa Ambler

LESSON 4: SHADOW SHAPES

Shadow: A dark shape cast below or behind an object or a person as light is blocked. People and apples cast shadows because they are solid and rays of light cannot pass through. A chandelier prism will cast a rainbow instead of a shadow because the light is able to go through the clear crystal.

Use the paper and painting or drawing materials of your choice. This lesson may be done with or without colors. Set up a simple still life with fruit on a pale ground then angle a bright light nearby so definitive shadows are cast. Older students may enjoy using charcoal, which will then have to be sealed with fixative since it smudges easily.

Paintings by Paul Cezanne contain many shadows and the ones with fruit would be simple to duplicate in real life. His 1890 work in oil, Still Life with Pomegranate and Pears, demonstrates that an object may cast a shadow of only part of its shape, depending upon the location of light. Notice the crescent moon-shaped shadow cast by the plate in this painting.

As an artist it is important to study the things around you and to notice how they are affected by light. If you want an object to look real, or 3-dimensional, in your artwork you need to give hints that it is something with a solid form. What is the lightest thing you can think of that casts shadows most every day? Hint: they are often fluffy and white and float in the sky. If there are clouds in the sky today look outside to see if any shadows show on the ground. Notice how the shadow-shape will echo the object’s actual form without being exactly the same.

Today we’re going to draw a vase or a piece of fruit and then draw its shadow; because to cast a shadow, something must have substance, in other words, to actually exist or to have weight. Practice drawing each object in the still life along with its shadow then move the light and notice how the shadow-shapes change.

When you’ve mastered the shapes, you are ready to learn about the edge between the shadow and its object. To make the object look solid artists use a trick to show that the lightest light comes before the darkest dark. If you are painting an apple, for example, be sure that some of the apple’s color shows just next to where its shadow begins. To do this create a tiny, tiny line of the color in your object, or white if you are not using colors, just before it touches the shadow – now your solid object appears to jump off the flat piece of paper!

Lesson 4: Notes for Teachers

If you have good direct lighting, or can work outside on a sunny day, place differently shaped small objects (such as vases, desk clocks, mugs…) near each student’s paper and let them trace the shadow cast. Give everyone a chance to outline the shadows of several objects using different colored pencils or crayons for each and overlapping the shapes to form a sort of abstract design. Tell the student’s to take this paper home and see if their family members can guess the object by the shape of its shadow. Be sure to ask your students to pay attention when a cloud covers the sun!

Another great activity for an energetic class is to let them trace each other’s shadows onto sidewalk or a driveway with colored chalk. The students can then spend time adding identifying details to their own outline. Finally ask the person retrieving each student at the end of class to guess which shadow-shape belongs to their artist!

Tips:

•Talk about how the placement of lighting or the position of the sun affects the shape of shadows.

•Ask the students where the sun would have to be for their bodies to cast the smallest shadow.

•Challenge everyone to observe shadows, both inside and out, for the rest of the week. Encourage your students also to look for shadows portrayed by other artists in book illustrations or artwork at home.